


CBN BRNCH 
GenColl 


HOWTO 
INCREASE A 
BANK’S DEPOSITS 


HI 6161 
.62 H8 
































































HOW TO INCREASE A 
BANK’S DEPOSITS 

TRIED OUT PLANS THAT ATTRACT 
COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS AND SAVINGS 
DEPOSITS—ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS AND 
IDEAS THAT PULL —SOLICITING SCHEMES 
AND FOLLOW-UP SYSTEMS THAT PRO¬ 
DUCE RESULTS —SELLING TALKS 
THAT CREATE BUSINESS 


AS USED AND 
PROVED SUCCESSFUL 
IN TWENTY-SIX BANKS 


FIFTH REVISED EDITION 



THE SYSTEM COMPANY 

CHICAGO NEW YORK 
A. W. SHAW COMPANY LTD., LONDON 
1909 











lEO 


How to Increase Your Sales 
How to Double the Day’s Work 
How to Reduce Factory Costs 
How to Increase the Sales of the Store 
How to Increase a Bank’s Deposits 
How to Sell Real Estate at a Profit 
How to Sell More Fire Insurance 
How to Sell More Life Insurance 
How to Write Letters that Win 


Others in Preparation 


Copyright, 1909, By 
THE SYSTEM COMPANY 


X 


« 

* 







CONTENTS 


PART 1 

HOW TO ADVERTISE A BANK 
By Daniel Vincent Casey 

The Business Building Force 

Chapter Page 

I. How Bank Advertising Developed. 7 

II. Selling Points in Banking. 15 

III. Mediums to Use in Advertising. 20 

IV. Seasons in Advertising. 29 

V. Specific Methods of Reaching Prospects. 32 

PART 11 

HOW TO SECURE SAVINGS DEPOSITS 
By Daniel Vincent Casey 

Make Men Save 

VI. Proved Arguments for Savings Deposits. 43 

VII. Savings Publicity Campaign Methods. 50 

VIII. Appeals by Letters and Special Inducements .... 57 

IX. Booklets and Other Auxiliary Methods. 64 

PART Ill 

HOW TO SECURE COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 
By Daniel Vincent Casey 

The Business Mari’s Ally 

X. The Talking Points in a Bank Account. 73 

XI. Framing up Advertisements. 81 

XII. A Bank's Services as a Business-Puller. 85 

XIII. Essay Advertisements for Deposits. 91 















4 


CONTENTS 


PART IV 

HOW TO SECURE THE INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNT 

By B. C. Bean 

Personality in Banking 

Chapter Page 

XIV. Personal Solicitation of Prospects. 99 

XV. Circular Letter Campaigns for Deposits.103 

PART V 

HOW TO SECURE BUSINESS FOR THE COUNTRY BANK 

By B. C. Bean 

Expansion 

XVI. Elements of Organization That Attract. Ill 

XVII. Getting Business for Each Department.113 

XVIII. Direct Campaigns for Deposits.119 

XTX. Advertising for the Country Bank..,.126 








Part I 


HOW TO ADVERTISE 
A BANK 



SELLING 

ARGU¬ 

MENTS 


BUILDING AND 
STATIONERY 


SERVICE TO DEPOSITOR 


ACCOMMODATION* 


PERSONAL INTEREST 


J 


HISTORY OF BANK 


ALO TO CITY 


PAYMENT OF INTEREST 


SAVINGS DEPOSITS 


COMMERCIAL DEPOSITS 



p-j STRENGTH OF BANK VAULTS^ 

SECURITY OF.DEPOSITS- 

-t STOCKHOLDERS STRENGTH | 


LlsTRENGTH OF ORGANIZATION] 


Factors in bank adverfising that create greater business and bring larger profits are 

here outlined as set forth in the book, 











































































































































The Business Building 

Force 

B ANK advertising—the intelligent, effec¬ 
tive kind—is a living business-build¬ 
ing force. 

It is selling effort applied to the man who 
can’t be reached by the everyday activities 
of the bank—the potential depositor who 
does not know what service and profit the 
bank has to offer him. 

It is education—concrete, specific infor¬ 
mation aimed at and appealing to the 
customer-elect. If he knew what the 
banker knows, he would be a savings de¬ 
positor or use its accumulated capital in 
his business. 

Tell him, therefore, what you know . 
Look at the thing from his view-point— 
show him how your service fits his needs. 

Get in touch with him—by letters, by 
newspapers, by any method that will 
reach him. Publicity is as necessary, as 
profitable nowadays for a bank as for a 
retail store. 

ADVERTISE! 





CHAPTER I 

How Bank Advertising Developed 

To create a halo—to suggest a want—to clinch the 
conviction that no other agency can so perfectly sup¬ 
ply that want—these are the aims and uses of pub¬ 
licity. Likewise they are the purposes of every banker. 
Indeed, bank advertising is as old as the business itself. 
What else was the discreet exploitation of the banker’s 
individuality which has put him in a separate class in 
every community? What else the civic and social ac¬ 
tivities extending his personal acquaintance and influ¬ 
ence? What other end, too, in the selection of officers, 
directors, stockholders, who can draw trade. 

All this was publicity of the subtlest sort, and for a time, 
it sufficed. But as business put on seven-league boots, 
the power of the banker’s personality dwindled or 
multiplied amazingly. The big banks with piled-up 
resources and panic-proof directories increased enor¬ 
mously, and necessarily attracted the greater industries. 
The smaller banks grew disproportionately, until they 
discovered that advertising could replace the old personal 
contact and find them new clients, new accounts to bal¬ 
ance the gains of their huge rivals. 

Thus bank advertising—persistent selling effort in 
the development of new markets—has been the crea* 


7 










8 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


tion of the bank of moderate resources; and conversely, 
the medium-sized bank has been the originator of the 
new and accepted methods of bank advertising. The 
dominant institutions in the country’s financial and in¬ 
dustrial centers have contributed little to this new 
knowledge, for the satisfactory reason that they 
needed no such outside help. The prestige of their 
names, their boards, their directories, was overwhelm¬ 
ing. So their newspaper announcements have rarely 
varied from the formal “card” or the semi-annual 
statement with its dreary items and bewildering totals 

A Bank Advertisement to Be Effective Must Be 
More Than a Conventional Card 

For the big banks this primitive form of publicity 
has been effective—partly, perhaps, because more 
cogent appeals from competitors did not intervene. 
For thousands of smaller banks it has been all but 
clear waste of money. It is a significant circumstance, 
however, that of recent years some of the larger met¬ 
ropolitan institutions have adopted the new method of 
advertising and now fill their newspaper space with 
specific claims and convincing reasons for employing 
them. 

Bank advertising, then, by the experience of big 
and little institutions alike, must “say something” to 
the prospect. 

Human interest, the faculty of capturing attention 
and making the appeal personal, are equally as nec¬ 
essary in a bank announcement as in the advertise¬ 
ment of a new breakfast food. More so, indeed. Man 
must eat at intervals, but the need of a savings ac¬ 
count, the possibilities of commercial credit, are often 
ignored until the last dollars are in hand. Unless red 


BANK ADVERTISING DEVELOPMENT 9 



“A Bank far All the People’* 



The Auditor of Public Accounts of the State of Illinois has called tor m 
Statement of condition as at the c oramenc ement of business May 12,190S. 
The figures we submitted in accordance thereto contain the following 
interesting items. 

Capitol Stock - - - 1,000,000.00 

This is the working capital of the institution and together 
with the surplus js commensurate with the total, of deposits. 


Surplus -. 1,000,000.00 

Nti more convincing proof of the soundness and strength of 
the bank could be found than the fa<5l that this million dollar 
surplus is real—alt earned. :: :: ij 

Cash Resources - - 5,010,492.84 

This is money in the vaults or on deposit with Banks and 
Bankers in Chicago and other cities. It is thus available for 
immediate use. :: :i :: :: :: 


Loans and Discounts-6,526,353.77 

This comprises loans on collateral and clean paper of repu¬ 
table merchandisers, manufacturers, corporations and individu¬ 
als, all of which loans are made with great care and judgment 

Deposits - - - - 12,361,164.67 

This represents moneys left with us by thousands of depositors 
in our Savings, Commercial and Trust Departments. Legiti¬ 
mate, sane, straightforward, safe Banking methods have 
brought us this evidence of the confidence of the people in us. 


Union Truss Company 


TRIBUNE 

BUILDING 


CHICAGO 



A clever arrangement of a bank statement as an advertisement for business. Its 
brevity and the effective comments serve to win customers 










10 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


blood vitalizes the dry facts and figures they fail both 
in catching the reader’s fancy and in suggesting the 
want the bank is equipped to supply. 

Plan has been the first essential of every campaign 
launched against the surplus dollars of the American 
people. Of general advertisers, the banks have been 
the last to discover this, because they assumed that 
banking was a business apart. With dignity for fetish 
and the tradition of conservatism for guide, they 
squandered literal millions on frigid newspaper cards 
before the experience of the pioneers in the new ad¬ 
vertising taught them that the same space could be 
made to produce results in fresh, vital business drawn 
from unworked fields. They discovered that instead 
of wasting thousands of dollars on inefficacious adver¬ 
tising they could get tangible results for their money. 

Carrying on a Persistent Campaign for Business, 
with a Solid Foundation to Start With 

These pioneers applied the essential principles of all 
advertising to their campaigns. Having certain spe¬ 
cific services and advantages to depositors to offer, 
they decided to offer them just as though they were 
shoes or sewing machines. Free of prejudice, they 
analyzed their problem of marketing as any sane mer¬ 
chant would do. They chose their mediums with the 
idea of reaching certain classes likely to have idle or 
surplus money. They eliminated waste or duplicate 
circulation and “keyed” their ads so that results could 
be traced to each publication and unprofitable medi¬ 
ums cut off. This last was a radical departure in 
financial advertising. Never before had bankers made 
an intelligent effort to test the results they were get' 
ting from their publicity. 


BANK ADVERTISING DEVELOPMENT 11 


They did not stop with mere assertions. They 
backed up their announcements with tangible “rea¬ 
sons why.” 

They told who their directors and officers were, how 
their funds were invested or loaned. Millionaires’ 
names do not add to the selling value of a board of di¬ 
rectors unless the millionaires are known as sane, con¬ 
structive business men, not speculators whose mush¬ 
room fortunes may vanish over night. 

They followed up every inquiry with letters and 
persuasive booklets, enlarging on the strength of the 
institution and the ease and convenience of banking 
there. 

In two cities—Pittsburg and Cleveland—the new ad¬ 
vertising found many converts. In each a group of 
savings banks began to exploit their wares. So effect¬ 
ive and convincing were their arguments that Cleve¬ 
land banks, for instance, soon held $190,000,000 in sav¬ 
ings deposits. That is ten times their proportional 
share. Only six Americans in every thousand live in 
Cleveland, while the one hundred and ninety millions 
represent sixty dollars in every thousand deposited in 
the country’s savings banks. 

Nor can these results be dismissed as the outgrowth 
of special conditions. New York, Baltimore, Chicago, 
Atlanta, Milwaukee, offer examples of individual 
banks which have profited tremendously by adapting 
the methods of commercial advertising to their own 
publicity. 

And from quite across the continent comes the most 
striking instance of this new advertising “uplift.” In 
1902, the oldest bank in Spokane, Washington, 
had deposits of $588,335 and a capital-surplus of $253.- 
282. Newspaper advertising was begun—a modest 


12 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


Tfte Directors 


are large stockholders and recog¬ 
nize their responsibility to deposi¬ 
tors by making personal exam 
tions and have an accurate kn 
edge of the affairs of this ban! 


Cyrus H. McCormick 
Lambert Tree 
Moses J, Wentworth 
Thies J. Lefens 
E. H. Gary 
John S. Runnelfs 


Albert Keep 
Ersklne M. Ph 
Enos M. Bartoi 
Chauncey Kee 
Clarence A. Bi 
E. D. Hulbert 


Orson Smith 

Invite the accounts oJhmerch; 
firms and corporations desiring 
superior services of a bank ec 
ped to transact any banking 1 
ness. 

Fifty Yeard of Safe Banking 

ehawttM ft 


The Me 
attdTri 

Capital ai 

13$ 


na- 


Commercial 

Banking 


50 Years of 
Safe Banking 

The funds of this bank are invested 
with the greatest caution and with 
a knowledge guided by half a cent¬ 
ury of banking experience. 
Commercial, Foreign, Savings, 
Trust, Bond and Farm Loan De¬ 
partments.—Safe Deposit Vaults. 
The officers in charge of the vari¬ 
ous departments will be pleased to 
give their personal attention to the 
business of depositors. 

Established 1857 

The Merchants’ Loan 
and Trust Company 

Oldest Bank in Chicago 

13$ Adams Street 


We invite accounts of merchants, 
manufacturers, firms, corporations 
and individuals, and will extend to 
them such accommodations as are 
consistent with sound banking 
methods. 

With its large capital, its ample 
resources, and its efficient organi¬ 
zation, this bank is prepared to 
i ., ii . 1 i nd of legitimate 


assured of courte- 
nd close personal 
r wants. 

in Chicago 

ants'Loan 
Company 

57,000,000 

% Street 


rnrnmm 


Three advertisements in a series of twenty used to exploit various banking services and 
increase general business by pointed arguments 
















BANK ADVERTISING DEVELOPMENT 13 


campaign developed by the assistant cashier without 
previous training, and based on the idea of presenting 
some specific service or advantage to customers in 
each announcement. In two years deposits made the 
amazing increase of 400 per cent, amounting to $2,- 
825,930 in September, 1904, and as the advertise¬ 
ments gained in force and distinction, in May, 1906, 
deposits went up to $5,023,413. Compared with the 
figures for 1902 this shows an increase of more than 
750 per cent in three years and a half—results sug¬ 
gestive of some Aladdin’s charm rather than the 
homely magic of printer’s ink. 

Analysis of this Spokane bank’s campaign is doubly 
instructive. Like the Eastern examples quoted, it 
proves that a moderate advertising appropriation, in¬ 
telligently expended, will bring results out of all pro¬ 
portion to the expense involved. It also establishes 
as a fact that a publicity expert need not be employed 
to produce announcements of real pulling power. 

Extensive Advertising Requires Services of an 
Advertising Man as Assistant to Bank Officer 

Where choice must be made between teaching a 
banker advertising methods or an advertising man 
banking—a small appropriation being involved—econ¬ 
omy dictates the first alternative. The best advertis¬ 
ing is admittedly “salesmanship-on-paper.” And who 
so well equipped to write effective banking ads as 
the man familiar with every function and department 
of the institution? 

At the same time, the banker turned advertiser must 
reverse his point of view—see things as an optimist 
instead of discounting his material as he discounts the 
value of collateral offered him. 


14 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


Where a more extended campaign is necessary to 
get the best results, as in a large city with a dozen 
or more daily and weekly newspapers to be handled, 
the work of preparing the advertisements and follow¬ 
ing them up cannot be assigned to an officer with other 
duties to perform. Here is the place to employ an 
advertising man, with comprehensive knowledge of 
local mediums and follow-up systems as well as style 
in printing, type, cuts and other mechanical details 
On attention to these mechanical details depends the 
distinctiveness of the advertisements—a most valuable 
quality, since it identifies the bank’s announcements 
the moment they are seen and gives each individual 
“ad” cumulative power in building up the impression 
of the community that the advertising bank has some¬ 
thing to offer which other banks lack. 

In succeeding chapters the case of the savings bank, 
the commercial or national bank, the trust company 
and the country bank will be presented separately and 
in detail. Though some of the trust companies—the 
newest creations in financial machines—unite in them¬ 
selves all banking functions, the exploiting of the vari¬ 
ous departments in each is a different problem. They 
will be handled separately, then, and specific answers 
will be given to the What? When? and How? of bank¬ 
ing publicity. Proved campaigns which have brought 
results will form the basis of the answers. 


Bridge the Gap 

/CENTRALIZATION in the indus- 

trial world demands advertising to 
bring together supply and demand. 




CHAPTER II 

Selling Points in Banking 

Certain qualities, arguments, “selling points,” 
are common to all banks. All good advertising 
looks from the viewpoint of the consumer. What is it, 
then, that the “prospect” wants to know about a 
bank? What will interest him and prompt him to trust 
his money to an institution entirely outside his daily 
experience and knowledge? 

First, security of deposits. From the depositor’s 
viewpoint, the bank exists to provide safe storage for 
his surplus cash. Even the interest paid on savings 
or commercial balances is a secondary consideration 
though itself a powerful argument. 

To promote public confidence in the bank, therefore, 
is the first step in an advertising campaign. The ma¬ 
jority of small business men and wage-earners are un¬ 
familiar with banks and banking methods, and the in¬ 
stitution which tells them frankly, in simple terms, 
what security their deposits will have goes a long way 
toward securing their accounts. All the more is this 

i 

necessary and expedient now, when the “muck-rake” 
has shattered confidence in some business concerns. 

The history of the bank—its growth—how it has 
weathered various financial storms—what it has done 


is 






16 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


to help the progress of the city—its readiness to lend 
money to every safe industry—the financial strength 
and standing of its directors and stockholders—how 
individually they must stand behind the bank—who 
they are, what their work and resources are—the ratio 
of capital and surplus to deposits—all these facts are 
materials for suggestive and convincing advertise¬ 
ments exploiting the strength and safety of the institu¬ 
tion, effective in bringing business to every department. 

In Banking, Possibly More Than Anywhere Else, 
the Personal Touch Is of Much Importance 

After security of deposits, in publicity value, comes 
service to depositors. Interest on idle money—on 
certificates of deposit and commercial balances as well 
as savings accounts—confidential relations with depos¬ 
itors—advice to investors, depositors, borrowers— 
discounts and accommodations to business men 
—the convenience, economy and safety of letting 
the bank do its part—here again the advertise¬ 
ment aimed at the wage-earner may be framed to per¬ 
suade the business man or housewife as well. 

The value of personal touch can hardly be exag¬ 
gerated. If it pays a druggist to sell stamps and mul¬ 
tiply his telephones for the accommodation of the pub¬ 
lic, it is just as surely good business for a bank to 
invent new ways of serving and getting into contact 
with everybody. Relations with depositors should be 
friendly as well as confidential, and the advertising 
should reflect a desire to serve non-depositors as well 
as owners of pass-books. Right here is an opportunity 
neglected by bankers. Thousands, hundreds of thou¬ 
sands of dollars have been stolen from communities by 
“get-rich-quick” and fraudulent investment concerns, 


SELLING POINTS IN BANKING 


17 



Statement April 6th, 1906 


nsiderafe 

Conservatism 

in Banking 

is to care lor 

many inf erects 

while capital- 

• • 

[ 7infV r> r>r>p 


Nat 



June 18, 1906 


e National 



Believing that a 
statement of facts and 
figures relating to the 
nature and volume of 
business transacted 
m Chicago by tbe 
National Bank of tbe 

REPUBLIC 

may be of interest to 
those who wish to 
know wherein the 
individual character¬ 
istics of the bank, its 
l „ - — policy, 

differ- 
n other 
sport of 
de Sep- 
1904. is 

tplified. 


OfWZ 

REPUBLIC 

Confidently' 
believes it can 
meet every 
requirement 
of tlie most 
discriminat¬ 
ing bankers 


Yoor Business Invited 


REPUBLIC. 


Advertising to other bankers. These hand lettered statements of condition following 
comptroller’s calls were sent to correspondent banks and prospects 














































18 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


because bankers have hesitated to offer advice to de¬ 
positors withdrawing their balances or to mnounce the 
true nature of these frauds in the newspapers. The 
rest rooms for women and writing rooms for men 
maintained by many banks can be exploited to ad¬ 
vantage, cordial emphasis being laid on the fact that 
everyone is welcome to use them. 

The individuality of the bank should color all the 
advertising, as well as show in the building, the bank¬ 
ing room, furniture and stationery. A dignified and 
appropriate home has come to be part of the equip¬ 
ment of every great bank, not only in the industrial 
capitals of the country, but in cities of lesser im¬ 
portance. The advertising value of such a building is 
immense. It stands for stability, permanence, the faith 
of the institution in its future and respect for its func¬ 
tions. It impresses all who see it, giving them a ma¬ 
terial symbol of security worth thousands of publicity 
dollars every year. Wise recognition of this adver¬ 
tising value dictated the erection of the distinctive 
bank buildings which are among the ‘‘show places” of 
almost every city. 

Publicity Establishes a Feeling of Friendliness and 
Security Among the People of the Community 

Business-getting is the first purpose of all advertis¬ 
ing. For banks it has also a defensive value not lightly 
to be considered. It is insurance against loss of con¬ 
fidence in times of stress. That publicity cures all evils 
is a popular dogma now, and the bank which takes its 
depositors and the community into its confidence in 
prosperous times, explaining its policy in regard to 
loans, investments, discounts, telling them frankly 
what it is doing, how it is safeguarding its own inter- 


SELLING POINTS IN BANKING 


19 


ests and their balances, is piling up a confidence-credit 
which will stand heavy drafts against it when panic is 
in the air. 

Too often depositors, especially savings depositors, 
are ignorant of the methods and purposes of banking, 
and when the crisis comes they want their money first 
and explanations later. Recourse to the “sixty-day 
rule” is an advertisement of the bank’s weakness need¬ 
ing years to wipe out of the community’s memory. But 
where they have been kept in touch with the policy 
and the history of the bank, they retain confidence. 

How publicity prevents runs was exhibited in the 
handling by the Chicago clearing-house of the acute 
situation created by the failure of the "Walsh group 
of banks a few years ago. The newspapers which 
printed the information of the crash printed also the 
announcement that the associated banks of the city 
would take over all accounts of the Walsh institutions 
and pay their book value on demand. Had the action 
of the clearing-house been delayed or the publication 
of its guarantee been less general, few of the smaller 
banks would have escaped runs and a general panic 
might have developed. 


Straight Ahead 

I T is wonderful what can be done in 
time by a man who works persistent¬ 
ly along the right lines. It’s deviating 
from the course, getting off the track, 
letting down a little at times, that is fa¬ 
tal to progress. Walter H. Cottingham 




CHAPTER III 

Mediums to Use in Advertising 

Granting the materials the bank has for exploiting 
itself, the news it has to tell, the suggestions and argu¬ 
ments to present, the facts with which it can drive 
home its claims to public consideration and employ¬ 
ment, how shall it impress these facts and claims on 
the community? Through what mediums can it best 
reach its prospective customers ? 

These mediums, or means of communication, fall 
naturally into two groups: 

First—mediums of general publicity, daily and 
weekly newspapers, class papers, magazines, theater 
programs, billboards, street car cards and suburban 
time-tables. 

Second—mediums of direct or individual appeal, per¬ 
sonal letters and circulars, booklets exploiting the 
functions and advantages of the various departments, 
“house organs/’ calendars, blotters and advertising 
novelties for distribution to classified lists or within 
certain neighborhoods, selected for the campaign. 

Close study of the local situation and the bank’s 
purposes should precede the choice of mediums as well 
as the adoption of a plan or policy in advertising. 
The strength of newspaper advertising—the over- 


20 












MEDIUMS TO USE m ADVERTISING 21 


whelming element in any general publicity campaign 
—lies in its instant appeal to the whole community, 
the possibility of taking advantage of the public mood 
to drive home some specific lesson or offer, and in the 
undeniable advantage of suggesting the same thing at 
one time to a wide circle of “prospects’’ and allowing 
telepathy to add its force to the appeal. 

The important advantages of direct advertising, on 
the other hand, is the opportunity it gives to adapt 
the appeal exactly to the wants or desires of the per¬ 
son addressed and to follow up patiently and vigor¬ 
ously each response until the “prospect’’ is turned 
into a customer. 

In a city where the newspapers are really good ad¬ 
vertising mediums, where folk read and trust them 
and retail merchants get returns from their ads, no 
better mediums can be found. With this reservation, 
however—that a rival bank has not yet exhausted the 
field by intelligent and vital appeals. 

Where the newspapers are not important cogs in 
the social and business machines, or where a competi¬ 
tor has been first in the field with a successful cam¬ 
paign, direct advertising will give the best results. It 
need hardly be added that no bank can afford to re¬ 
peat or duplicate any of the advertising devices or 
campaigns of a rival institution. In determining a 
policy, what “the other fellow” has done or failed to 
do must be taken into consideration. Sometimes ad¬ 
vantage can be taken of what the competitor has al¬ 
ready done to educate the community. 

Mathematics must enter into the planning of a 
newspaper campaign. In the larger cities no two pa¬ 
pers command the same clientele. The bank’s first 
problem, then, is to learn which of these reach the peo- 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


v-2 


STATEMENT 

OF THE CONDITION OF 

Real Estate Trust Company of Pittsburgh 

AT THE CLOSE OF BUSINESS, MAY 26. 1906 


ASSETS 

COLLATERAL NOTES - • • $2,986.629 19 

These notes are secured by high grade 
investment securities; mo9t of them are 
payable on demand, so that when neces¬ 
sary, they may be converted quickly 
into cash. 

MORTGAGES ..... 1,733.199.69 

AU mortgages held by this company are 
on high-class Greater Pittsburgh proper¬ 
ties, about equally divided between 
down-town business blocks and resi¬ 
dences in the most desirable locations. 

BONDS AND OTHER INVESTMENTS 1,883,365.75 
These consist of gilt-edged railroad and 
industrial corporation bonds and prime 
commercial paper. 

FURNITURE AND FIXTURES - 27.133.67 

Consisting of vaults, safes, furniture and 
equipment of every description. (In 
order to fully allow for depreciation of 
furniture end fixtures, $1,000 is deduc¬ 
ted every quarter from this item.) 

CASH RESERVE 

This consists of ready cash which every 
conservative banking institution should 
hold available to meet unusual demands 
of. depositors. A large reserve is con¬ 
stantly maintained by this company. It Is 
made up as follows: 

Deposited in other banks subject to our 


demand - 924,136.04 

Actual ca&h in vault - 84334.03 

TOTAL.$ 7,610,798.37 


LIABILITIES 

CAPITAL STOCK .... *2.000.000.00 

SURPLUS FUNDS .... L500.000.00 

These consist of a part of the earnings 
of this company that has been set aside 
as a safeguard. Our surplus and undi¬ 
vided profits, (see next item), amount to 
more than 100 per cent, of our capital 
stock. 

UNDIVIDED PROFITS - - • 396.535.16 

Consisting of money earned by the com¬ 
pany over and above that required to 
pay our annual 10 per cent, dividend; 
but not yet passed to the surplus funds. 

dep6sits 

Individual Deposits - 2 304.648.91 

Money deposited with this company by 

firms, corporations and individuals; a 

part of these deposits is subject to check 

on demand, while a large percentage is 

in the form of "savings” accounts on 

which we pay 4 per cent, interest. 

Savings accounts cannot be withdrawn 
without notice. 

Deposit* from Other Banks • - 1.009,61430 

Money deposited by other banks with 
this company and subject to check. 


TOTAL. $7,610,79837 


DIVIDENDS —$790,000—Paid since January 1. 1902, from earnings, have been deducted from undivided profits. 


How the dry-as-dust bank statement can be made interesting and intelligible—a sav¬ 
ings leaflet with pulling power 

pie it would influence—the wage-earner for the sav¬ 
ings department, the merchant and manufacturer for 
the commercial department. Usually newspapers will 
claim all elements of circulation. Examination of their 
records of city and country deliveries is the only way 
to test these statements and come at the information 
on which the character of appeal in each paper should 
be based. This exact knowledge, too, is necessary to 
avoid costly duplicate circulation. 

The Problem of Reaching Prospects Successfully 
Through Specific Channels 

The general rule, to use afternoon issues to exploit 
the savings department and morning issues for gen¬ 
eral banking service, is a good one. Wage-earners buy 











MEDIUMS TO USE IN ADVERTISING 


23 


and read evening papers, they are largely “home” pa¬ 
pers, while the most valuable element of morning cir¬ 
culation is the business man. In the larger cities, too. 
certain papers, both morning and afternoon, are recog¬ 
nized financial organs and as such have special value 
in exploiting a bank’s facilities for commercial busi¬ 
ness. In the same way, the newspaper favored by 
women should be used to bring to their attention the 
advantages offered women, not only for savings ac¬ 
counts but also for checking accounts, investments and 
secure deposit of valuables. 


^The largest railway company 
in this country has recently'bor¬ 
rowed fifty million dollars on its 
bonds from the people of 
France. This is remarkable, ow¬ 
ing to. the large loans recently 
made fey the same people to the 
Russian Government-and else¬ 
where in Europe.' Where do the 
French people get all this 
money? John D. Rockefeller, 
just returned from Paris, tells 
the secret in seven words, viz.: 
‘'The people of France save 
their money.” Would it not be 
well for you to begin saving 
now? This strong Bank will 
welcome your account. 

^Nothing would suit us better 
than to have five thousand 
working people depositing their 
checks with us every month, 
leaving a part of their wages 
constantly accumulate. 

IJMake the start today by com¬ 
ing in and talking over your in¬ 
terests with our cashier. 


Commercial & 
Farmers * 

National Bank 

HOWARD AND GERMAN '8T& 
United States, State and CityDeposifory 


0 0 0 0 0 0 


OUR We Do 

DISCOUNT „ . 

DEPARTMENT Business 


000000 


not for the convenience of ourselves al¬ 
together, but rather for the profit to our¬ 
selves without too great an expense to 
our patrons, and at the same time afford¬ 
ing them a most convenient and satis¬ 
factory service. 

qwe find our daily discount service a 
most popular one. This provides for a 
committee of our Directors who call at 
the Bank daily and in conjunction with 
the executive officers pass promptly on 
the merits of loans offered. 

CJThe daily discount-committee plan 
enables us to thwart the dangerous 
practice plan where authority is some¬ 
times assumed alone by a President or a 
Cashier, and at the same time enables 
us to give the business man a quick and 
decisive answer. New loans, of course, 
are sometimes held up for further invest¬ 
igation, but in matters of established 
credit we deal very promptly. 


Commercial <T8b Farmers 
National Bank 

United States, State and City Depository 

HOWARD and GERMAN STS. 


At the left the news of the day is used to appeal to savings depositors. At the right 
the bank’s special facilities for making loans safely are explained^ 














24 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


The position of the advertisement in a newspaper is 
an important thing to be considered. Where newspa¬ 
pers do not make the stupid and senseless rule of con¬ 
fining banking ads to the financial page, nearly every 
department can be better exploited in the pages de¬ 
voted to general news. Few workmen, clerks, women 
or small business men read the financial pages. An ad 
for the savings department, therefore, is almost en¬ 
tirely buried on the stock-market page, and for the 
same reason, ads for the safety-deposit vaults, trust 
and investment departments lose much of their value 
there. 

Class papers in the cities large enough to support 
them are efficient advertising mediums because the ap¬ 
peal can be narrowed down to reach the class point 
of contact. German, Scandinavian, Bohemian and Yid¬ 
dish dailies supply means of reaching thousands of 
thrifty folk who now entrust their savings to private 
banks because they are not familiar with the ad¬ 
vantages offered by the larger American institutions. 
In New York, Chicago, Pittsburg, Milwaukee and St. 
Louis these foreign dailies have proved their worth 
whenever the appeal was accommodated to the wants 
of their readers. 

General Mediums for Reaching the Public and the 
Probability of Satisfactory Returns 

Over-statement of circulation is the vice of many of 
these foreign dailies—the only economical way to do 
business with them is to require proofs of circulation 
and a rate based on net deliveries. Class publications 
printed in English are of little value because their cir¬ 
culation duplicates that of the daily newspapers. Mag 
azines and weeklies of national circulation are, of 


MEDIUMS TO USE IN ADVERTISING 25 


course, out of the question except for banking-by-mail 
institutions, to which distance is no obstacle. 

Besides newspapers and class publications, the other 
mediums of general publicity have been employed by 
banks in various cities. Theater programs, suburban 
time-tables, street car cards, even billboards, are in 
use to exploit the savings and real estate departments 
and safety deposit vaults. Returns from these medi¬ 
ums are hard to check, however, and the advertise¬ 
ment whose results cannot be traced is purely a specu¬ 
lation. The only way to get a positive line on such 
advertisements is to localize them or make some spe¬ 
cial offer in each and then keep careful track of re¬ 
turns. The value of a billboard opposite a factory 
entrance, for instance, could be fairly determined by 
crediting to it the increase in new accounts opened by 
employees of that particular concern. 

Direct advertising, the banker’s second means of 
exploiting the wares he has to sell, has the advantage 
of providing the most elastic of campaigns. In its 
simplest form it is a personal letter to a prospective 
customer. But the principle of direct appeal to indi¬ 
viduals may be extended indefinitely — giving vitality 
and irresistible power to classified series of form let¬ 
ters, to a succession of booklets, folders, calendars and 
blotters, each exploiting the function or activity of the 
bank in which the “prospect” is likely to be inter¬ 
ested. 

The form letter—the main reliance of the banking- 
by-mail institutions—has never been developed to its 
fullest efficiency in a city campaign. Gathering the 
most notable examples of its successful use, a study 
of these efforts shows that every productive element 
of a city’s population can be reached with an appro- 


26 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


priation no greater than an adequate newspaper cam¬ 
paign requires. 

Not one or a dozen letters would suffice for such a 
campaign. Though the arguments could be used again 
and again, a separate series would be required for each 
class addressed. The savings department might require 
six or even ten series. For the initial letter a booklet 
may sum up all the arguments for the bank. Folders, 
blotters, monthly calendars, and other printed inclos¬ 
ures could be profitably used in the succeeding letters. 
Only one series of inclosures would be demanded by 
each department, the variation of the appeal being ac¬ 
complished in the letters. 

Letters That Often Serve to “Ginger Up” Cus¬ 
tomers to Do More Business 

The classified lists would begin with the commercial 
and savings depositors already on the books. To keep 
in touch with these and stimulate interest in the bank’s 
doings, cordial letters signed by the president should 
inform them semi-annually of the condition of the 
bank, and at shorter intervals, of important things oc¬ 
curring to it. Commercial depositors are potential cus¬ 
tomers also for credits $pd discounts, investments, cer¬ 
tificates of deposit, trust services %nd safety deposit 
storage. Inactive savings accounts might be rejuve¬ 
nated by a cheerful note from the president inclosing a 
check for the semi-annual interest. The investment 
department, too, has a legitimate interest in every sav¬ 
ings account of $100 or more. 

For names not on the customer books, the latest city 
and telephone directories will supply hundreds, per¬ 
haps thousands of “prospects” for both commercial 
and savings business. Classifying these names by oc- 


MEDIUMS TO USE IN ADVERTISING 27 


cupations, it will be practicable to use form letters 
and yet adapt appeal and argument to the needs or 
prejudices of the individual. 

Other savings lists easy of acquirement would in¬ 
clude teachers in public schools, policemen, firemen, 
mail carriers, railroad and street railway employees 
and in some cases members of skilled trade-unions. For 
each class, of course, the letters should smack of the 
occupation and draw illustrations from the day’s work 
of the prospect. 

Where such classified lists cannot be made up, the 
city polling list, censored by someone acquainted with 
the character of each ward and precinct, affords a 
splendid mailing list for letters and booklets. 

Church directories and rolls of women’s clubs have 
special value in a direct campaign, containing, as they 
do, the names of hundreds of women who may be in¬ 
terested in any of the bank’s activities, with the ex¬ 
ception of discounts and money-lending. 

The cumulative effort of advertising is another point 
to be considered in the planning of a - campaign. Un¬ 
less some radical departure from custom is exploited 
in the earlier announcements—an unlikely thing in 
banking publicity—the ads printed the tenth, thirtieth 
and fiftieth weeks will each produce more results than 
those of the weeks before. 

Hoiv Bank Employees Are Spurred to Greater Effi¬ 
ciency and Loyalty by Campaigns for Business 

The first letters and booklets of a city postal cam¬ 
paign may perhaps bring more new depositors than 
the later letters. But as it is the tenth sale that makes 
the manufacturer’s profit, so it is the conversion of 
the tenth “prospect” that pays new banking divi- 


28 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


dends. And it is only by piling up argument and ap¬ 
peal that the tenth man or woman is hammered into 
line. 

The reflex influence of advertising on the personnel 
of a bank is a by-product of no little value. Where a 
special effort patently is being made and money spent 
to attract new business, new spirit and interest are in¬ 
jected into the force. From president down to mes¬ 
sengers, it is “gingered up.” Customers are attracted 
by the greater courtesy shown them, and clerks develop 
qualities of salesmanship which pull new business to 
every department of the institution. 

Advertising is essentially teaching. For banks this 
teaching should not stop with education of the w T age- 
earner to save. It should convince him that the sav 
ings should be deposited in the bank paying for the 
advertisement. In the same way storekeepers should 
be taught to deposit their balances daily and pay by 
check, investors to seek advice, merchants and manu¬ 
facturers to double their capital by judicious loans and 
discounts, prosperous folk to use safety deposit boxes 
for storage of stocks, papers and valuables—but al¬ 
ways the fact must be driven home that the advertising 
bank is the best agency. Not only must the bank cre¬ 
ate a market for its services, but it must build a fence 
around that market and put sign-posts at each corner 


Study It Out 

B USINESS is a science. Men who 
study it as a science, succeed. 
Men who trifle with it, fail. Success 
is not luck, but logic. 




CHAPTER IV 
Seasons in Advertising 

The majority of banks spend a certain sum each 
year for publicity, either for newspaper space or for 
calendars, blotters and specialties which bear about 
the same relation to business building as a traveling 
salesman’s cigars. Since the money is to be spent it 
would seem ordinary trading sense to concentrate ex¬ 
penditure strictly on the season or seasons when busi¬ 
ness men have surplus cash to deposit or need money 
for the conduct of their undertakings, and to try to 
show them by concrete instances how the bank’s serv¬ 
ices may be turned to profit in their stores or factories. 

Calls from the comptroller fix dates for the publica¬ 
tion of statements of condition. New Year’s, with its 
annual meetings and its general atmosphere of busi¬ 
ness changes, is usually recognized as a time to seek 
new accounts. But to the more important business 
divisions of the year, varying according to localities, 
less attention is paid. Manufacturing seasons, when 
the financing of their undertakings becomes the ab¬ 
sorbing study of producers, are clearly defined, as are 
the periods for wholesalers and retailers when capital 
is altogether inadequate to the needs of their trade. 
A goodly proportion of business men, not understand 


20 






30 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


in g the basis of banking credit, are allowed less of that 
important commodity than their resources fairly com¬ 
mand. To such, at the hour when future demands 
loom up uneasily, frank statements of the factors on 
which credit is founded would appeal powerfully as 
holding out possible extension of their borrowing abil¬ 
ity. This would not mean reflection on the methods or 
standards of competing banks—such publicity would 
react without fail on the institution fathering it— 
but plain exposition of the helps the bank holds out 
and the terms on which these helps may be secured. 

High tide in the movement of money is plainly 
marked in most communities—in the South when cot- 


Vou cannot afford to 
take any unnecessary risk 
with your hard - earned 
aavings. During these pros¬ 
perous times the- tempta¬ 
tion to invest in some form 
of speculation is very 
great. All sorts' of in¬ 
ducements aTe offered and,, 
unless groat caution is ex¬ 
ercised, errors arc likely to 
he made which will prove 
costly. JHie shrewd invest¬ 
or does not put his money" 
into every scheme present- 
wNwhich promises large re¬ 
turns; rather is he satis¬ 
fied with absolute security 
for both principal and in¬ 
terest, such as is afforded 
by this strong Bank. Yvfr 
account, large at. small 
welcome. 



18161 

,HK 


UnitedStates.State andCityDepository 

HOWARD AND GERMAN STS. 


Government 

Sapfrvlsicn 
Means 
Much 

flYear by year the Govern¬ 
ment's supervision of National 
Banks Is becoming more rigid, 
and the qualification of the 
examiner Is reaching a higher 
efficiency. 

flThe Comptroller of the Cur¬ 
rency, Mr. Ridgely, la knock¬ 
ing at the door of Congress 
and asking still greater pow¬ 
ers in the administration of 
his trust. He Is determined to 
safeguard the people's money 
deposited In National Banks. 
The.wo.rd NATIONAL shall be 
and is a synonym of safety., 
f Many banks are saved every 
year by the timely warning 
and halt called in mismanage¬ 
ment by the National Bank 
Examiner. 

^Having fully decided on a 
National Bank as your deposi¬ 
tory. select the one' that offers 
ample facilities and good serv¬ 
ice. You are respectfully ln- # 
vited to call and see us. 



United States,State and CityDepository 

HOWARD AND GERMAN STS. 



Hot leather does not 
affect INTEREST. It 
works just as hard for 
or against you at 98° as 
at 65°. 

Set Interest at work 
for you by depositing 
your surplus funds with 
us. 

We hate several plans 
by which we will allow 
you a reasonable and 
conservative- interest. 

If you have $500 or 
$50,000 idlefundswhich 
you are not going to 
use for a while, come 
in and talk it over .with 
our cashier and fcee What 
we can do for you. 


Commercial S 
Farmers' 

National Bank 

United States, State and CityDepository 
HOWARD AND CERMAN ST& 


Three advertisements of the “essay” style, giving strong arguments in favor of the bank 

as a safe depositary of funds 






















SEASONS IN ADVERTISING 


31 


ton conies to market, the Middle West when corn and 
wheat funnel through the elevators, in industrial cen¬ 
ters when the factories run full time. It is for the 
banker to anticipate these seasons of exceptional pros¬ 
perity and make his appeal for new accounts and time 
deposits, his offering of investments and other services 
coincide with them. 

Society’s return from the vacation resorts and the 
first month of school make opportune the exploiting 
of checking accounts for housewives and teachers, 
with the convenience and safety paying bills by check 
assures, as well as certificates of deposit for savings 
and the special facilities and conveniences provided by 
the institution for women depositors—these last most 
profitable forms of advertising. For professional men 
—attorneys, doctors, dentists, and so on—this is also 
the season of augmented income, therefore of oppor¬ 
tunity for the bank in quest of new depositors. The 
ideal publicity calendar, however, includes every day 
which furnishes a news event—fortunate or untoward, 
local or national—as text for convincing presentation 
of some service or commodity the bank has to sell. 


Serve Your Customers 

T HAT is sacred, which serves. Once 
a business man was a person who 
not only thrived by taking advantage 
of the necessities of people, but who 
banked on their ignorance of values. 
But all wise men now know that we 
benefit ourselves only as we benefit 
others. % Elbert Hubbard 




CHAPTER V 

Specific Methods of Reaching Prospects 

Mechanical details involved in a newspaper cam 
paign—the amount of space to be used, its position, 
the manner of display, and typing—differ in individual 
cases. Assuming that there is at least one newspaper 
of authority and approved circulation among business 
men and another a “home” organ—the usual situa¬ 
tion-division of the advertising is obvious. 

Newspaper Positions That Are Especially Adapt¬ 
able for Effective Bank Advertising 

Space and position are inseparable considerations. 
Some great newspapers will print small banking an¬ 
nouncements on the first page; others of equal stand¬ 
ing bar them arbitrarily from any but the financial 
page. Where “full”' position on the front page or 
the earlier reading pages is attainable, a four-inch, one- 
column advertisement is worth quadruple this space 
on the general advertising pages, plastered with other 
financial or merchandizing appeals. No reader can 
miss the front page advertisement, segregated from all 
other announcements; he comes to it fresh and the im¬ 
pression, therefore, is vivid and lasting; it needs only 
a definite, attractive appeal to reach him. 


32 





HOW TO REACH PROSPECTS 


33 


When a position apart from other publicity is denied 
by the rules of the paper, recourse must be had to size, 
display or generous margins to prevent submergence 
on the pages given to retail and general advertising. 

‘‘Keying’’ commercial banking announcements in 
order to trace results is almost out of the question. 
The better method—it should be the practice of every 
bank whether formal publicity is attempted or not—is 
tactful inquiry on the part of the officer opening the 
account. 

Either as an alternate method or as a supplement to 
newspaper publicity, direct advertising through the 
mails holds important possibilities in the development 
of new business. Here banks have one tremendous ad¬ 
vantage over every other class of direct advertisers— 
no prospect has the temerity to waste-basket a com¬ 
munication unread. From a recognized agency of 
wealth, a bank letter has the lure of an unknown po¬ 
tential avenue to fortune; it holds a hundred de¬ 
lightful possibilities as well as a presage of trouble 
which insures attention. Also it ministers to the pros¬ 
pect’s self-importance, unless he be a money captain 
himself, to be singled out as worthy the bank’s con¬ 
sideration and attention. 

With all these elements of a perfect approach, the 
problem of reaching and convincing the prospect 
should be simpler, and results easier to secure and to 
gauge than in newspaper advertising. The same sell¬ 
ing points, the same facts of service may be presented 
in a series of letters to selected individuals or firms— 
with this advantage, that the argument may be nar¬ 
rowed down to just those services likely to interest 
each man and their presentation made from his own 
particular viewpoint. Moreover, a series of form let- 


34 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


ters may be “tried out” on twenty or fifty persons at 
minimum outlay and their pulling power determined 
before they are multigraphed and sent to the larger 
lists. 

Supplementing these letters, each of which should 
deal with some specific, concrete phase of the bank’s 
activities, booklets of more general character may be 
advantageously inclosed. The first of these, available 
'for every series of letters, should be in effect an ex¬ 
panded letter of introduction for the bank—what it is, 
where it is, what it has done for the city and its 
patrons in the past, what it is doing for depositors day 
by day, what gives it strength and stability, its facili¬ 
ties for handling business, the personality of its offi¬ 
cers and directors. Pictures should tell part of the 
story, especially if the bank building exterior and inte¬ 
rior have beauty and impressiveness. 

Appealing to Women—An Important Phase of 
Banking and a Special Problem in Advertising 

For letters to women, there should be a booklet deal¬ 
ing with the institution strictly from the woman’s 
point of view, both as the custodian of her money and 
a sort of business headquarters, picturing the con 
veniences installed for her benefit and making clear all 
the varied and interesting services the bank is pre¬ 
pared to render her. 

For business and professional men a similar publi¬ 
cation explains the bank’s functions and what its serv¬ 
ices mean to manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, im¬ 
porters and exporters, men and women in the profes¬ 
sions. This provides inclosures for two letters in 
every series. With the third message a booklet ex¬ 
ploiting the personality of the bank’s officers, if it be 


HOW TO REACH PROSPECTS 


35 


Banking by 
Mail 


Accounts of 
Organizations 


Church societies, fraternal organi¬ 
zations, clubs, trade unions and 
business associations will find it 
convenient and desirable to have 
surplus funds in a savings account, 
subject to the control of two or 
more officers. 

Savings accounts receive 3% in¬ 
terest, payable semi annually in 
Jaruary and July of each year. 

Call or send for booklet Infor-’-U. 
mation for Sa 


Establi 


Our system of banking by mail is a 
great convenience to our cltydepos- 
itors, as well as those out of town. 
There are over 1,250 sub-postal 
stations and branch express offices 
located in the residence and busi¬ 
ness districts of Chicago where 
money -orders can be purchased 
and deposits sent by mail to this 
bank. 

Full details explaining our system 
will be found in booklet "Informa¬ 
tion for Savings Depositors," 
which will be sent upon request. 

Oldest Bank in Chicago 


i^ts’Loan 

Accounts of Women 


The Mere! and Children 
and Trust 


Fifty Years c 

135 Ada 


Women's accounts are kept con¬ 
fidential and held subject to their 
own order. 

Children may open savings ac¬ 
counts. Parents who desire to open 
accounts in the name of children, 
subject to the order of the parents, 
may do so. 

Call or send for booklet "Infor¬ 
mation for Savings Deoositors ' 

Established 1857 

The Merchants’Loan 
and Trust Company 

Oldest Bank in Chicago 

135 Adams Street 


ompany 

$6,500,000 

hreet 


The speciaJ efforts put forth to get the business of all classes of citizens, both locally 
and from a distance, are illustrated in this group of advertisements 

















36 


ADVERTISING A BANK 

a large institution, may be inclosed. For smaller 
banks, all these booklets may be compressed into one— 
or expanded into many, where the prospects in sight 
justify the expenditure. If the bank has a savings 
department, as many commercial institutions do, the 
first and third booklets may be used in a campaign for 
savings depositors, while for each of the departments 
a separate booklet on investments and letters of credit 
may be used in addressing selected lists of prospects. 

Special Series of Letters Which Can Be Used in 
Reaching Certain Classes of Prospects 

In compiling mailing lists—apart from that catalog¬ 
ing depositors—no source of information should be 
neglected to keep them up to the hour. Each new club 
list, social and church register, telephone and city di¬ 
rectory, Dun’s and Bradstreet’s lists and directories 
of professional men and women should be scrutinized 
as soon as issued and compared with the lists in use. 

In addition officers and employees should contribute 
to a list of special prospects—treasurers of churches, 
fraternities, societies and young business men just 
launching enterprises. 

On the amount of the appropriation and the number 
of prospects must depend the manner and extent of 
the campaign. In a large city, for instance, where 
two hundred or more school teachers are employed, it 
would pay to address a series of form letters directly to 
them, another series to women distinctly housewives 
or non-producers with incomes, a third set to profes¬ 
sional and business women—each series as closely 
adapted to the individual needs of each class as the 
publicity man’s knowledge permits. If any individual 
refuses to rise to the lure of a checking account, she 


HOW TO REACH PROSPECTS 


37 


remains a prospect for the certificate of deposit as a 
savings medium. 

In the same way the lists of men and firms may be 
divided and subdivided, the closer the viewpoint of 
each class is approximated, the more effect the appeal 
made. One of the virtues of the direct campaign is 
its flexibility; another the opportunity to concentrate 
effort and expenditure on the neglected prospects in 
the community. 

To the well organized advertising department, news¬ 
paper publicity is a scout as well as a creator of new 
business—uncovering potential depositors and giving 
access to them for a more effective “follow-up.” Indeed, 
some institutions employ solicitors to canvass business 
districts for promising prospects—either convincing 
them on the spot that they should open accounts, or 
breaking the ice for the approach of the publicity de¬ 
partment, speaking in the name of the bank’s president 
or cashier. 

Neighborhood business is a vital element to every 
commercial bank. Real estate transfers and rental of 
business property should be vigilantly watched, there¬ 
fore, and the attention of the new tenant or owner 
called immediately to the bank’s convenience and its 
desire to serve him. On the other hand, old depositors, 
moving outside the bank’s natural zone, can usually 
be kept loyal if promptly and cordially followed up. 

This matter of keeping in touch with depositors is 
too often neglected. Every notable event in the bank’s 
experience, from a statement of condition showing un¬ 
usual gains to increase in capital or surplus, can be 
made the occasion of a form letter signed by the presi¬ 
dent, identifying the depositor’s interest with the 
bank’s and thus binding him closer to the institution. 


38 


ADVERTISING A BANK 




In the handling of form letters, either of the oc¬ 
casional kind or the regular “follow-up,” rigorous 
system must be observed lest superfluous or contra¬ 
dictory messages be sent to individuals. Not only is 
the effect of all future form letters destroyed when 
such an absurdity occurs, but the depositor’s respect 
for the bank’s business methods is destroyed, and he 
begins to think of competing institutions where pos¬ 
sibly more systematic methods are employed in the 
routine work. 

Methods of Getting the Business of Other 
Banks to Swell Profits 

After depositors, commercial banks want the busi¬ 
ness of banks in other towns—city banks the reserves, 
collections and foreign business of country institu¬ 
tions; country banks the collections of their bigger 
brothers. How do they go after it? 

The personality of the officers and directors, the in¬ 
dividuality and standing of the bank are the vital fac¬ 
tors, service offered being much the same in every 

% 

case. Do any of these things show in the advertising 
aimed at prospective correspondents? 

Run through your banking organs, your morning 
mail, and the question needs no further answer. In the 
financial weeklies and monthlies, forty-nine in every 
fifty advertisements are framed from the same formula. 
In the direct advertising—booklets, statements and 
so on—the blight of conservatism has spared but few. 
The greater the bank, it seems, the fewer concessions 
to progress in printing, in paper making, in type ar¬ 
rangement, in the subtle art of salesmanship on paper. 

It is true that all the banks have much the same 
wares to exploit, but two or three stick in the memory 


HOW TO REACH PROSPECTS 


39 


because they employ deft phrases or printer’s craft to 
set forth their offerings. If it be true that the metro¬ 
politan colossus does not need to make its publicity 
interesting and attractive, why squander any money 
on the sort of advertising it does? 

* 

How Individuality May Be Made a Great Busi¬ 
ness-Pulling Factor in Any Bank 

The individuality of the bank should color every 
message going to other bankers, since competition is 
nowhere more brisk or exacting. Whether it be state¬ 
ments of condition, an offer to out-of-town bankers to 
explain new systems, short-cuts, checks on accounting 
methods or new ways of handling various departments, 
the announcement will gain force, perhaps a perma¬ 
nent place in the recipient’s files, by reason of dierni- 


THE NATIONAL CITY BANK 

OP NEW YORK 

Chartered 1812. 

THE STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL CITY BANK MADE IN 
ANSWER TO THE CALL OF THE COMPTROLLER, MARCH 22,1907, 
SHOWS GROSS DEPOSITS OF $185,028,550; NET DEPOSITS OF 
$147,833,582; GOLD AND LEGAL TENDERS IN VAULT, 
$43,395,479, BEING 29J* PER CENT RESERVE, OR $6,600,000 
ABOVE LEGAL REQUIREMENTS. THE CAPITAL OF THE 
BANK IS $25,000,000, ITS SHAREHOLDERS’ LIABILITY 
$25,000,000 AND ITS SURPLUS AND UNDIVIDED PROFITS 
$22,652,808; A TOTAL OF $72,652,808. THE NATIONAL CITY 
BANK DESIRES ADDITIONAL HIGH GRADE BUSINESS. 


Announcements like this one, in a concise and attractive style, contrast favorably with the 
conventional bank statement, which is unread or forgotten 



40 


ADVERTISING A BANK 


fied and appropriate printing. Choose a style of type 
and of display, then cling to that style, making changes 
an evolution in style, not radical assumption of a new 
one. 

Talking with various bankers, in country towns as 
well as cities, I found encouraging unanimity of opin¬ 
ion about the direct advertising sent out by one of Chi¬ 
cago’s commercial institutions, already held up as a 
model in these pages. In seven banks, I found sets more 
or less complete of the successive statements, announce¬ 
ments and booklets had been preserved for reference. 

Little educational booklets have also been used by 
this institution to attract new correspondents and keep 
in touch with old ones. Discussion of the problems in 
determining credits, in making special loans and other 
practical banking functions, have been balanced by 
crisp outlines of time-saving methods in the account¬ 
ing, collection and other departments. Not only has 
the helpful attitude of this bank been recognized by 
increase in reserve accounts, but it has attained a 
unique position by the excellence of its printing. 


The Gist of Banking 

F INANCIAL diplomacy and bank¬ 
ing ability make the ideal cashier; 
courteous, he makes the smallest de¬ 
positor genuinely welcome; informed 
and brainy, he consummates the big 
deal. Between the small business of 
the new depositor and the big deal 
of the corporation lies the gist of bank¬ 
ing; there hinges success. B. C. Bean 



Part II 


HOW TO SECURE SAVINGS 

DEPOSITS 


SAVINGS 

DEPOSITS 


AUXILIARY 
METHODS OF 
APPEAL 


THEATER PROGRAM* 
AND SO ON 


HOUSEHOLD 
ACCOUNT BOOKS 


POCKET ATLASES 


METHODS OF 
CAMPAIGNS 


r- BOOKLETS. AND SO ON 


DIRECT APPEAL 


IHOME SAVINGS BANKS 


PERSONAL LETTERS 


NEWSPAPERS AND 
MAGAZINES 


- | .MISC, jPRtVlCEGES 


PUBLICITY 

ARGUMENTS 


SPECIAL SERVICES 


COMPLIANCE WITH 
STATE LAWS 


J 


-c 


(ADVICE 


J 


SECURITY OF DEPOSITS 


- | |INTt»t«T OW MONCY I 

' 0*n ATOWAOI or MOMtY j 


*- fimoHML or orricc** 


PROSPECTS 
TO REACH 


WOMEN AND CHILDREN 


WAGE EARNERS AND 
SMALL MERCHANTS 


The savings department of a bank offers a wide opportunity for reaching prospects, 
as shown by this chart of the contents of the next part 






































































































Make Men Save 

S AVING means strength, self-discipline. 

The man that saves carries the stamp 
of thrift, purpose, stability. More saving 
gives him these qualities if he hadn’t 
them before. 

The bank that wins the man who saves 
enjoys the confidence of the community. 
Money-getters are not always cautious; 
money-savers invariably are conservative. 
Their judgment counts. 

New savings accounts, therefore, add to 
the strength, the resources, the prestige 
of any bank, 

Saving depositors also are in line for 
checking accounts. They are prospective 
investors, customers for bonds, certificates 
of deposits and nearly every service banks 
have to sell. 

Get men to save. Show them the value, 
the profit, the insurance of personal thrift. 
Talk to them man to man. Show them 
what a savings account in your bank will 
do for them. Inspire them with confi¬ 
dence and the desire to save. 

ADVERTISE! 





CHAPTER VI 

Proved Arguments for Savings 

Deposits 

Bank advertising usually begins with exploiting of 
the savings department. Checking accounts, commer¬ 
cial, trust and foreign business can be attracted by 
officers and directors of position and personality. This 
ability is part of their equipment as bankers, though it 
diminishes as the size of the city increases and their 
acquaintances become a smaller fraction of the whole. 
But to reach the great mass of wage-earners and small 
merchants, removed from social contact and influence, 
any management admits its need of outside help. Ad¬ 
vertising is brought in to bridge the gap. 

The savings bank lends itself readily to advertise¬ 
ment. Its appeal is the widest. Where a hundred 
persons in a community are interested in loans or in¬ 
vestments offered, the fact that a bank account can 
be started with one dollar will catch the attention of 
a thousand men and women. To develop this curiosity 
into confidence is the work of the bank’s publicity. 

No set formulas for achieving these ends can be 
worked out. Conspicuous success in the harvest of 
unregarded dollars has attended the newspaper and 
magazine campaigns of two great groups of savings 


43 












44 


GETTING SAYINGS DEPOSITS 


banks in Pittsburg and Cleveland. Results quite as 
marked have come to a new Chicago bank whose plan 
was based on direct appeal by mail to every promising 
prospect in the city. 

Another Chicago institution, half a century old, with 
immense prestige, began exploiting its new savings de¬ 
partment at the beginning of its fourth year. Effort 
was concentrated on newspaper advertising and the 
daily average of new accounts was doubled in the first 
six months. By other banks, east and west, solicitors, 
“house-organs,” street-car and billboard announce¬ 
ments—all the remaining mediums of publicity—have 
been employed to draw out millions of idle dollars 
and turn them into working, productive capital. 

The lesson of these individual campaigns is plain. 
Good advertising—salesmanship expressed on paper or 
in personality—will bring new depositors to any sav¬ 
ings bank, big or little. Intelligence in choosing the 
mediums of expression is essential, but the really vital 
thing is the advertisement itself. Statements of the 
bank’s resources, plus the roster of officers, will add 
few names to the signature-rolls. Black type lends no 
allurement to the common interest rate paid annually 
by all banks in any given city, as it shows no point 
of superiority. 

Strength and Security of Deposits Is Strong Point 
to Be Made in Advertisements 

What has a savings bank to advertise? In common 
with commercial institutions and trust companies, its 
strength and the security given deposits are the first 
things a community must be satisfied with before de¬ 
positors line up at the savings windows. In a previous 
article some suggestions were given as to how proof 


ARGUMENTS FOR SAVINGS DEPOSITS 45 


Thrifty W 


omen 



Nine times out of ten the women are the 
money savers of the family. Men mean will 
enough. They know the value of having 
money in bank, hut they haven’t the knack of 
saving. They haven t learned the trick of 
making one dollar do the work of two in buy¬ 
ing, and of laying the other dollar away for 
the rainy day that is sure to come. 


d. To encourage these thrifty women this bank 
has set aside a special window for their benefit 
and convenience. The teller in charge will be 
pleased at all times to assist ladies who may 
desire to open a bank account, make out de¬ 
posits, checks, or give any information that 
may be desired in reference to our banking and 
savings department. 


€J Saving# Department open aleo every Saturday evening 
from eix to eight. 


The Old National Bank 

(Thfe Marble Bank Building) 


An effective and specific appeal for the savings accounts of women—a force¬ 
ful “essay” advertisement that won business 









46 


GETTING SAVINGS DEPOSITS 


of this security might be drawn from the history and 
the past policy of the banks. 

Savings banks have the additional argument that 
they must comply with the state laws which specify 
how their funds must be invested and what classes 
of securities may be accepted for loans made. How 
this state supervision insures absolute integrity for all 
deposits and how the collective wisdom of both execu¬ 
tives and directors is brought to bear on all invest¬ 
ments—these are circumstances calculated to impress 
the man or woman to whom the theory and machinery 
of banking are alike mysteries. 

How the bank makes its money is another thing the 
depositor is anxious to learn. If he wishes to borrow, 
he must pay six per cent, while the savings bank offers 
him only three or at most four per cent. Yet this con¬ 
dition affords a striking text for impressing upon him 
the security of deposits by explaining how the laws 
require savings to be invested. Right here, too, is an 
opportunity to discourage speculation—especially in 
insecure mining, oil and industrial stocks. 

Publishing the lists of the bank’s holdings in bonds 
and mortgages, bearing down on the fact that the in¬ 
terest-rate on “gilt-edged” securities rarely exceeds 
four or four and a half per cent, will clinch this fea¬ 
ture of the campaign. Some very successful savings 
banks make it a practice to publish this list of securi¬ 
ties at regular intervals, explaining the stability of 
government and municipal bonds and going into the 
reasons for the strength of other issues. To this end, 
the annual statement of the bank can be transformed 
from a confusing assemblage of figures into a mine of 
interesting information, every item a business-bringing 
argument. 


ARGUMENTS FOR SAYINGS DEPOSITS 47 


Safe storage for his money—insurance against rire, 
thieves, his own carelessness or extravagance—is the 
first argument for the savings bank. Service to de¬ 
positors is the second. Beginning with interest on his 
idle money and the possibilities of gain in savings— 
capital on hand when opportunity comes for its em¬ 
ployment—this service may include checking priv¬ 
ileges for the payment of bills, advice on investments, 
cashing of pay checks and other checks, loan of home 
savings banks and pocket banks, and a dozen functions 
developed by local conditions. 

Special Conveniences Offered in Services to Women 
Depositors Should Be Emphasized 

The special services and conveniences designed for 
women are of particular advertising value. The bank 
of central location in a large city misses an oppor¬ 
tunity when it fails to provide rest rooms and reading 
rooms for women, and to urge them to make the bank 
their downtown headquarters when shopping. Some 
big banks have even found it profitable to establish 
branches in the heart of shopping districts for the sole 
purpose of getting in touch with women—the real sav¬ 
ers of the wage-earning and salaried classes. 

Checks offer many opportunities of advertising now 
disregarded by savings banks. In the larger cities the 
privilege of checking against savings accounts is de¬ 
nied depositors, but in cities of 100,000 or less, it 
could be employed to advantage. Indubitably the 
checking habit promotes thrift—the dollar in hand is 
spent for non-essentials when the dollar in bank would 
be untouched. Many salaried men with the savings 
habit—young men especially—make minimum deposits 
weekly or monthly, keeping more than they need for 


48 


GETTING SAVINGS DEPOSITS 






PER CENT 
INTEREST 

Our savings depositors re¬ 
ceive their quarterly inter- 
est on the firSt days of 
January, April, July and 
October. This is credited 
to their account and there¬ 
after draws interest the same 
as a deposit Send for our 
booklet "Banking by Mail.” 


Better Than A 
Government Bond 

A savings account in this 
bank pays more than a Gov¬ 
ernment Bond and is jui) as 
safe. It will earn 4% interest 
(compounded quarterly) and 
your money is in a bank 
that has demonstrated itself 
to be solid as a rock for 
fifty-seven years. 


THE 

GUIDE POST 

The largest bank in Battle 
Creek—the oldeSt bank in 
Battle Creek—are two guide 
poSts that should direct the 
man looking for a strong 
bank. Fifty-seven years of 
safe and conservative bank¬ 
ing through good times and 
hard times, is our record. 
We will pay you 4% interest 
on your money (com¬ 
pounded quarterly). 


READY 

CASH 

A savings account in this 
bautk is a safe investment. 
It pays you 4 % compound 
interest and is ready cash 
any time you want it Un¬ 
like other investments, it is 
always worth dollar for 
dollar and you Stand no 
chance of losing by the fluc¬ 
tuations of the markets. 


BANKING 
BY MAIL 

Is the title of our new 
booklet which explains 
in detail our system by 
which we bring this 
bank to your very door. 
Send for it today. We 
pay 4% interest on sav¬ 
ings accounts. 


Old ■ NationalNational 



DO 

IT NOW 

Our depositors receive 
annually 4% interest, which 
is credited to their account 
on the firSt days of January, 
April, July and October. 
Better decide today to get 
4% interest on your savings. 
Send for our booklet "Bank¬ 
ing by Mail.” 


ESTABLISHED 

isar 


Bank 


UNITED STATES 
DEPOSITARY 


Battle Creek. Mi cm. 



UNITED STATES 
DEPOSITARY 


These arguments in six advertisements were used in small town papers of the country 
and neighboring counties to attract customers tojthis small city bank 




















ARGUMENTS FOR SAYINGS DEPOSITS 49 


living expenses, when ability to check against their 
accounts would lead to much larger deposits and a 
corresponding gain to the bank. 

The Cashing of Pay Checks Often Brings Direct 
Results as an Advertisement 

Cashing of pay-checks is a function banks leave too 
often to saloons in factory neighborhoods. Here is a 
service that would be appreciated by hundreds of 
wage-earners in every manufacturing town. Starting 
of a savings account might be made a condition of 
cashing the checks, though the service would more 
than pay for itself by simply bringing hundreds oi 
potential depositors into touch with the bank and its 
officers. 

These are specific services which any bank may prof¬ 
itably exploit in its advertising. Another line of argu¬ 
ment, of doubtful value where two or more institutions 
are in competition, deals with the advantages and ne¬ 
cessity of saving—“for old age” or “for a rainy day.” 
Poor Richard’s business maxims may be gainfully used 
in a booklet for distribution among young men, but the 
average wage-earner resents being lectured. A weak¬ 
ness of these general arguments, too, is that the busi¬ 
ness they create goes to the nearest or more convenient 
bank, rather than to the particular bank which pays 
the advertising bills. 

Here is ammunition for a year’s campaign. How 
shall it be impressed, not only on the folk whose 
names are not on the bank’s books, but on depositors 
as well? For publicity which ignores the man who 
owns a pass-book is bearing only half its rightful load. 



CHAPTER VII 

Savings Publicity Campaign Methods 

Four agencies for covering a city territory, four 
methods of approach, suggest themselves in advertis¬ 
ing for savings deposits: 

1. Newspapers, class papers and other mediums of 
general publicity. 

2. Personal letters, booklets and circulars, mailed 
to a selected list. 

3. Booklets and calendars for general free distribu¬ 
tion incidentally exploiting the strength, security and 
convenience to depositors, etc. 

4. Home savings banks and pocket savings banks 
distributed by solicitors. 

Intelligent use of newspaper space has brought re¬ 
sults to every savings bank employing it. At the same 
time, conspicuous waste has marked the savings ad¬ 
vertising of nine in every ten banks in America. The 
formal “card,” deadly dull in its repeated announce¬ 
ment—“We pay 3 per cent on savings deposits,” or 
“Savings deposits received before the 10th of the 
month will draw interest from the first”—has grown 
so familiar that it wakes no interest in the casual 
reader. It tells him nothing that he does not know. 
There is three per cent interest waiting fo r him—he 


50 















SAYINGS CAMPAIGN METHODS 


51 


may take it or leave it, the bank is indifferent to his 
action. When, as is often the case, five or six banks 
make this announcement on the same page of a metro¬ 
politan newspaper, it is absolutely certain that only 
1 he newspapers profit appreciably by the display. 

Such publicity is conspicuous waste. Contrast with 
it any advertisement of any of the banking-by-mail 
concerns. Note the vitality of the appeal, the vigorous 
insistence on the advantage of a higher interest-rate— 
and the perfect safety of long-distance banking. 

Precisely the same qualities shine in the “home” 
’ advertisements of the banking-by-mail institutions in 
Cleveland and Pittsburg papers. Indeed, they gain in 
piquancy and effect because their appeal is narrowed 
down to fit local conditions. Does a house burn down 
and a “stocking bank” lose its hoard in the flames? 
This story is made to point the folly of risking loss 
when the National Trust and Savings Company pays 
four per cent yearly for the privilege of insuring your 
money. 

This news quality in an advertisement makes its ap¬ 
peal well-nigh irresistible. Herein lies the chief op¬ 
portunity of newspaper advertising. The newspapers 
give the savings bank an audience as wide as the city, 
and a chance to drive home the lesson of thrift and 
carefulness, when people are in the mind to listen. 

Ability of a Bank to. Withstand All Depressing 
Influences Is Strong Advertising Point 

The afternoon’s news, for instance, may bring tid¬ 
ings of a great catastrophe like the San Francisco 
earthquake and fire, or the difficulties of a bank of 
local or national reputation. While the tale is on every 
tongue, the publicity “opportunist” is preparing copy 


52 


GETTING SAVINGS DEPOSITS 


for an advertisement which will use the public interest 
to emphasize the strength, the resources, the safety of 
his bank under similar stress. No need to repeat the 


"ABavings Acoount li^lMTWr'WuR'Snd- 
'must be zealously sareghai"d»d Both, for 
-Individual and public good." 


The.Merchants' Loan anA Trust Company 
. Is a member of the Chicago Cleaulng Houae 
Association- and subject to the'rigid and 
' thorough examinations of that organization. 


The Board of Directors of the Merchants' 
Loan and Trust Company, 


Cyrus H. McCormick. 
.Lambert Tree. 

Mosee J. Wentworth. 
Thlee J Letens. 

E H Gary. 

Orson Smith. 


Albert Keep. 
ErslHne M. Phelps. 
Enos M. Barton 
Chauncey Keep. 
Clarenoe A. Burley. 
E. D. Humbert. 


recognizing their rasponmblllty to the de¬ 


positors and the-general public, also make 
personal examinations and have an. accurate 
knowledge of the affairs'of this bank. The 
savings deposits are Invested ln> such care¬ 


fully selected bonds and mortgages as they 
approve. 


The Merchants/Loan and) Trust-Company 
has a Capital and Surplus of $6,500,000. It 
was established In 1857 and Is the "oldest 
bank In Chicago." During fifty years Its 
conservative banking methods have been 1 
tested hy great calamities and have proven 
);o be wise and safe, having successfully^ 
withstood 


The panic of 1857. 

The great Civil War, 1861-18C3 
The Chicago Fire, 1871. 

The panic, 1873. 

The panic, 1893. 


The Savings Accounts of those desdnngthc 
Services of a strong savings hank are 
cordially Invited. 

135 Adams Street. 

Saving Depositor* are paid 
S% Interest. Deposits made 
during the first five day*, of. 
September -will draw Interest 
from September 1st. _ Money 
left cm deposit until - January 
1st. 1907. will receive four 
months' Interest. • 

Safe Deposit Boxes to Bent. 


I . Sorfie things forr'SaHfiy Depositori'lo 

‘consider 

Chicago is fortunate in having banks 
which are known throughout the world 
as being among the strongest in the, 
United. States. 

The Merchants’ Loan and Trust Comu 
pany was established in 1857 and is thfcj 
"oldest bank in Ghicago.” and it has suc-^ 
'cessfully withstood every calamity known 
jto the banking history of this country 
during the past 50 years. 

It withstood the panic of 1859." 

The great civil war of 1861-65. 

Chicago fire of 1871. 

Panic of 1873. 

Panic of 1893. 

- The Merchants’ Loan and Trust Com-l 
pany has built up a substantial banking 
business, due to the confidence of its de-. 
positors and its methods of conservative 
And safe banking. It has a paid-up Cap-. 
Stal and Surplus of $6,500,000. The De¬ 
posits exceed $ 50 , 000 ,boo. 

} The .Merchants’ Loan and Trust Com-j 
parfy opened a Savings’ Department in' 
, 1902 ,' which has had a rapid growth* 
(Saving- Depositors receive 3% interest. 
[Deposits of $1.00 or more are accepted. 

' The Savings Accounts of all those de¬ 
siring the services of an old and strong 
bank are cordially invited. " 

The Officers are:, 


Orsoh Smith. President. 

E. D. Hulbert, Vice-President. 

J. G. Orchard. Cashier. 

F. N. Wilder. Assistant Cashier. 

F. G. Nelson. Assistant Cashier. 

P. C. Peterson, Mgr. Foreign Dept. 
John E. Blunt. Jr.. Mgr. Bond Dept 
Leon L. Loehr. Mgr. Trust Dept. 

F. W. Thompson, Mgr. Farm Loan Dept'- 

The Merchants’ Loan and Trust Build¬ 
ing, northwest corner Clark and Adams 
(streets, directly opposite the new U. S; 
postoffice. Bank entrance 135 Adams 
Street. 

Chicago banks pay theseml? 
annual Interest to- savin# 
.depositors in July. -.That is. 
•a particularly good time tot 
opep a nyw Savings Account. 

ga£eDep 9 «jt Vaults. Boxes, $ 3 Upw a^d.- 


At the left is an advertisement intended to emphasize the fact that the board of directors 
are in personal and direct] touch with (thejbankj business Jto] safeguard customers. 

It was printed the day after a one'man bank[failed. The announcement atj 
the right emphasizes the bank’s strengthen weathering many stormsj 






SAYINGS CAMPAIGN METHODS 


53 


tale. It is enough to give reasons why such a catas¬ 
trophe would not affect the security of the bank’s de¬ 
positors. 

This is the successful policy of one of the oldest and 
most stable banks in the city of Chicago. Its campaign 
will serve as an example of intelligent use of news¬ 
paper space and a model for any campaign of like pur¬ 
pose, no matter how limited the appropriation. 

The savings department of the bank was scarcely in its 
fourth year. The prestige of the parent could not be 
greater, and the bald announcement of the depart¬ 
ment’s establishment was enough to bring in thousands 
of depositors. From the beginning, however, the adver¬ 
tising was of the conventional bank type. It brought 
results simply because the reputation of the bank and 
its great office building were persistent arguments 
backing up the newspaper “cards.” 

Finally, however, a radical change of plan was adopted. 
An advertising man with intimate knowledge of local 
newspapers and their circulation was employed. His 
appropriation was named and he was told to get re¬ 
sults. He got them. Using moderate space and no 
other mediums than daily and weekly papers, he se¬ 
cured as many new accounts in the first half of the 
first year as the bank had gained in the entire year previous. 

His methods are informing. He began by analyzing 
the city circulation of Chicago’s forty daily and weekly 
papers. He cut out duplicate circulation as much as 
possible. He studied the class papers of the city— 
German, Scandinavian, Hebrew, Bohemian, Irish, Ital¬ 
ian, Polish—and added to his list such as made a fair 
rate. With his mediums selected, he developed his 


54 


GETTING SAVINGS DEPOSITS 


plan of using them. It was based on the news and 
the calendar of holidays, both native and imported. 

When the news columns gave him a text in a failure 
or a catastrophe of commanding interest, he used 
quarter-columns and half-columns in the big dailies 
and told nearly everybody in town why his bank was 
troubleproof. He had half a century of history to quote 
in support of figures and statements and his advertise¬ 
ments carried conviction. 

Carrying Out the Policy of Emphasizing a Bank f s 
Absolute Security for Depositors 

They were entirely guiltless of display lines—merely 
a succession of short paragraphs set in 8-point old 
style type, a bit easier to read than the ordinary col 
umns of the papers. 

Appearing only when the public mind was unsettled 
by some untoward event, they breathed an atmosphere 
of security and gained their effect by contrast. 

The crash of the Walsh banks and the Bank of 
America, the run on another Chicago institution, the 
San Francisco disaster—these were some of the calam¬ 
ity texts which gave point to the calm announcements 
that the panic of 1857, the Civil War, the great fire 
of 1871 and the panics of 1873 and 1893 had made 
no impression on this Chicago bank. 

The old boards of directors gave up scores of men 
who had figured large in the upbuilding of Chicago, 
from William B. Ogden, the first mayor, to Marshall 
Field. The growth of the bank, its steady increase in 
resources and deposits had place, too, in this series of 
unique and effective advertisements. They were read¬ 
able, and the record of pass-books issued showed they 
were read and pondered. 


SAVINGS CAMPAIGN METHODS 


55 


Government bonds have 
just been issued bearing 
2% interest. 

Your saltings account 
with us will pay you half 
again as much interest. 

We incite small deposits 
as well as larger ones. 



- 

L-, 





K 

!S1 

1 

I 

ll 

1 

IE 



United Sta tes. State and City Depository 
HOWARD ANT) GERMAN STS. 


A national bank’s method of advertising to reach the small as well as the large depositor 


















56 


GETTING SAVINGS DEPOSITS 


For the Norwegian, German, Yiddish and other for¬ 
eign papers, these advertisements were translated and 
set in type similar to the text of each paper. Besides 
the advantage of the bank as a savings depository, the 
special facilities of the foreign department were ex¬ 
ploited on the eves of the Hebrew, Scandinavian and 
other foreign holidays, when it is customary to send 
gifts of money to the kinsfolk beyond the seas. 

Results from the foreign papers were easily traced. 
The “keying’’ of the advertisements in the metropoli¬ 
tan dailies was much more difficult, but it was accom¬ 
plished and the lists, both metropolitan and class, are 
being cut to include only productive mediums. One 
way of “keying” test advertisements is to run them 
in the various papers on different days, allowing for 
the diminishing influence of the appeal. 

Another way is to provide a booklet exploiting the 
safety, strength and convenience of the bank, its his¬ 
tory, and the name of its directors, giving it a differ¬ 
ent but very simple title in each paper and keeping 
strict account of the titles in the requests received. 
This matter of “ keying” is as important as good copy. 
In no other way can a bank know which papers are 
profitable mediums and which method of appeal brings 
the most satisfactory results. 


Try It Once 

[F you were a customer of your firm— 
* if you stood outside the cashier’s 
window—which of your methods would 
you first criticise ? 




CHAPTER VIII 

Appeals by Letters and Special 
Inducements 

Radically opposed to the campaign of general pub¬ 
licity described in the previous chapter of this book 
is the plan of direct appeal by personal letters, book¬ 
lets and “house organs’’ mailed to selected lists of 
prospective depositors. How these lists may be com¬ 
piled was suggested in the first article of this series. 
They are valuable only when professions, trades and 
occupations are kept carefully apart. 

Form letters signed by the president of the bank 
may be sent out at intervals to these lists. Each let¬ 
ter, however, must have a reason for existence and it 
must be a direct appeal to those addressed. 

Many teachers, for instance, begin the gathering of 
their next vacation’s funds on the first pay-day of the 
new school year. A fair proportion have no savings 
accounts, having exhausted their balances and surren¬ 
dered their pass-books during the summer. The right 
sort of letter from an established bank, signed by the 
president, will nearly always influence them to give 
their new account to the bank which asked for it. 
Just when to solicit accounts from a certain class is a 
profitable field for study. 


57 



















58 


GETTING SAVINGS DEPOSITS 


The possibilities of this direct method of approach 
were developed in the recent savings campaign of one 
of the new trust companies of Chicago. The problem 
was to reach the greatest number of people and con¬ 
vince them as speedily as possible that they should 
become depositors in the new institution. 

Campaigning for Savings Deposits Through Dis¬ 
tribution of Home Savings Banks 

The home savings bank was adopted as part of the 
plan. These little strong boxes had been distributed in 
various ways by other city institutions, but the adver¬ 
tising manager of the new bank saw further opportun¬ 
ities in them. Deposit of a dollar had always been 
required to secure a bank. He decided to give them 
free to everyone sufficiently interested to ask for them. 

While he perfected his plan, he used liberal space 
in the newspapers, more to establish his bank’s exist¬ 
ence in the public mind than with any serious selling 
intent. The individual savings banks were mentioned, 
but no purpose of distributing them free was hinted 
at. That was reserved for the circulars which presently 
began to flood the city, district by district. 

The registration lists of the last election gave the 
advertising manager—a newspaper man of wide expe¬ 
rience—his names and addresses. He knew the city, 
the character of every quarter, as few men know it. 
With this knowledge for his basis, he chose the wards 
and precincts worth attention and sent every voter 
one of his circulars. Not all the wards, nor all the pre¬ 
cincts of the best wards were included. 

To test his plan, he scattered one thousand of his 
circulars in good localities all over the city, while an¬ 
other thousand went into one neighborhood of approx- 


LETTERS AND SPECIAL INDUCEMENTS 59 


imately the same character. The returns from the 
scattered circulars were less than half the replies from 
the thousand directed at one district. This taught the 
value of concentration on one locality—telepathy or 
some subtle influence seeming to induce neighbors 
to think and act alike. 

The four-page circular contained little but a brief 
appeal, the conditions of the free offer and a list of 
the bank’s officers and directors. On the front cover 
was a cut of the home savings bank, with the signifi¬ 
cant statement ‘‘We bring this savings bank to you.” 

The appeal was so short and simple it is worth re¬ 
producing as a model of what such appeals should be. 

A photograph of the circular used in this campaign 
is shown at the bottom of the following page. Study it 
carefully. 

No obligation there. The man who applied for a 
bank had the privilege of depositing its contents, but 
there was no demand that he do so. With the circular 
was enclosed a stamped return card which told the 
Central Trust Company of Illinois: “You may deliver 
to me one of your individual steel savings banks, as I 
desire to become a depositor in your savings depart¬ 
ment.” These return cards were “keyed” and the 
lists checked and kept separate. 

Messengers delivered the banks—bright, cheerful 
young college and high school men, most of them now 
clerks in the savings department they helped to build 
up. When they delivered the banks they took receipts 
signed by the applicant or his wife, acknowledging 
the bank as a loan and promising to open a savings 
account or return the bank within three months. 

One thousand letters a day were sent out. Immedi¬ 
ate and overwhelming response came in some cases, in 


60 


GETTING SAYINGS DEPOSITS 


others the offer fell almost flat. Either way, those who 
did not send in the card were followed up at regular 
intervals until it was demonstrated that nothing could 
be gotten out of them. 

Persistent “Follow-up” of All Efforts to Gain Busi¬ 
ness Shows Results That Are Worth While 


From one huge residence ward, where folk with 
moderate incomes live, the returns from the first circu¬ 
lar reached thirty-two per cent. The “follow-up’’ sys¬ 
tem brought the final results up to the sixty per cent 
mark. The outlying districts where banks are rare 
naturally proved the best field. A surprising response 
came from the Lake Shore Drive and other exclusive 



W* aaiNO THIS SAVINGS BANK TO YOU 


Chicago,. 


- tQO 


CENTRAL TRUST COMPANY OF ILLINOIS ■ 

Yo% may deliver to me one of your individual 
Ate! savin ft taj/ts, as 1 desire to become a depositor in your 
Satinas Department 


If you will write your name anti addrt* upon the 
enclosed postal card and mail it. 

There will he delivered to you, without any coat 
whatever, a well made, handsomely finished steel 
individual savings bank. 

Put into this little bank your spare change, until you 
have accumulated, a dollar or more. 

Then bring it to the Central Trust Company of 
Illinois, corner of Dearborn and Monroe street*. 

It will be unlocked in your presence and you can 
deposit the •money, which will earn for you three per 
cent yearly. 

■ This proposition is offered not only to you but to aoy 
nember of your family. 

fou will notice that you are not required to make • 
leposit to secure an individual steel savings hank. 


Nome*. 




Chicago.- 


••**Im4 o 4 Central Tout Company of tUinoU t*Uvidul aatfaga 
tmnb Mn. which It loaned me without charge tad to* 

which t pmomiee to open « «*log» account with the Central Truet 
Chmptnji of {Uiaowt o* cninm the aaid bank with to two month* fm 

i. . 




The first circulars used by one bank in carrying on a successful city mail campaign, 
showing the appeal, return postal card and receipt for a home bank 





































LETTERS AND SPECIAL INDUCEMENTS 61 


quarters. Not many voters signed these cards, but the 
accounts of children and servants received made the 
returns very profitable. 

When the first deposit was received, the receipt for 
the bank was transferred to the file of the clerk enter¬ 
ing the deposit. The “prospect ’* who showed inactive 
at the end of two months received another circular 
reminding him of his promise to open an account or 
return the bank and asking for information of his in¬ 
tention. If this was ineffective, a third circular was 
dispatched, courteously requesting the same infor¬ 
mation and suggesting some simple systems, in stories 
full of human interest, by which other depositors had 
begun accounts. Some of the little stories are worth 
reproducing: 

Saves Every Cent.—“I never spend a cent. Every penny 
which comes into my possession is put away in a Central 
Trust steel bank until I have it full of coppers. When I 
buy a paper in the morning I give the newsboy the smallest 
coin over a cent I have. The pennies he gives back in 
change I keep until night, when I shove them through the 
slot of the steel bank. I find I save a good sum of money 
every month this way.” 

Saves for the Baby’s Education.—“Soon after our baby 
was born we got one of your little steel savings banks. 
We have adopted the scheme of putting into it every cent 
of spare change, and have started a savings account with 
that money to send our boy to college when he is old 
enough. I had never been able to save money before.” 

Saves to Pay Life Insurance.—“I carry two life insurance 
policies; the annual premiums amount to $117. Like many 
men I used to neglect to get ready to meet the annual pay¬ 
ment and frequently had to borrow from friends. Now I 
put at least $9.75 into one of your little steel banks each 
month, that is, a dime today, a quarter tomorrow, a nickel 
the next day and so on. I find I am saving in this way 
more than enough to pay my insurance premiums and for 
the first time in my life I have a savings account.” 

Saves All the Dimes.—“My husband gives me every silver 
ten-cent piece he has in his pockets when he comes home 
at night. Sometimes he has none and sometimes he has 
half a dozen. Every one of them I put in the little bank 
l got from you and my savings account in the Central Trus* 


62 


GETTING SAVINGS DEPOSITS 



Company, which now amounts to $105.60, is made up en¬ 
tirely of the dimes I collected.” 

Saves Systematically.—“The account I have in your sav¬ 
ings department is the first I ever owned. I have a little 
system which helps me much. I am paid oft Tuesdays. 
On Tuesday night I put a silver dollar in the little bank 
you loaned me; Wednesday night a half dollar; Thursday 
night a quarter; Friday night a dime; Saturday night a 
nickel and Monday night one cent, or $1.91 each week. I 
have stuck to this system for several months and, as you 
know, have a good, growing savings account.” 

The “prospect” who remained proof against these 
“selling points” was checked from the list and no 
further effort was made to reach him. The bank’s loss 
in this manner, however, amounted to less than throe 
hundred, though thirty thousand were distributed in 
the course of the campaign. 

Further “follow-up” circulars and letters were de¬ 
signed to encourage live accounts and rejuvenate un- 






















LETTERS AND SPECIAL INDUCEMENTS 63 


productive ones. Another circular, with a return card, 
mailed only to customers, asked for names of pros¬ 
pective depositors. 

Clever Ideas for the Starting of Savings Accounts 
That Mean Big Profits Eventually 

An added feature of this campaign was the sending 
of a savings bank to every baby born in a good neigh¬ 
borhood. 

The accompanying letter to the parents explained 
how an account begun for the youngster would provide 
funds for his college course or capital for his first busi¬ 
ness venture. 



Getting 


I T was an idea that fed the stalwart 
faith of Columbus; an idea that 
taught the observant Watt the power 
of the steaming kettle; an idea that shot 
through Franklin’s kite cord. Ideas 
have been the foundation of every 
achievement that has gone down in 
history. 

Ideas are the measure of your possi¬ 
bilities. There are no limitations; from 
a ten dollar idea to a fifty-thousand 


dollar idea — the choice is yours. 




CHAPTER IX 

Booklets and Other Auxiliary Methods 

Instead of home money-boxes, booklets descriptive 
of the bank, its growth, its security and the advantage 
of savings, could be used in a city campaign. As sum¬ 
maries of all the selling arguments at a bank’s com¬ 
mand, booklets have a distinct advantage over the 
necessarily brief appeal of newspaper advertisements, 
personal letters or street-car cards. 

They can develop logically and at ease the story and 
the lesson the bank would inculcate. Pictures, color- 
printing, all the resources of art and craft may be 
drawn upon to make the book attractive and insure 
it against the gutter and the waste basket. 

In the preparation of such booklets, the banking- 
by-mail institutions have set a standard of beauty and 
pulling power. This because the banks recognized that 
no other agency existed for turning the “prospect” 
answering a magazine advertisement into an actual de¬ 
positor. The printed matter and personal letters sent 
to each inquirer must attract and interest as a prelim¬ 
inary to convincing. 

This work was not intrusted to one of the over¬ 
worked officers of the bank. Instead, an advertising 
expert was hired to translate the bank’s appeal into 

64 















BOOKLETS AND OTHER METHODS 


65 


terms of daily speech, and the printer was ordered to 
make each booklet a miniature edition de luxe. Pre¬ 
cisely the same plan and principles must be followed 
in an effective city campaign. The arguments which 
have brought millions of dollars to the treasuries of 
the Pittsburg and Cleveland banks will have added 
force when used in a city campaign. Indeed, by adapt¬ 
ing the appeal to specific classes—salaried men, wage- 
earners, teachers, housewives and children—making a 
separate booklet for each class, the effectiveness of the 
campaign might be doubled. 

Miscellaneous Methods of Getting in Touch zvith 
Prospects and the Advantages of Each 

Booklets for general distribution are of doubtful 
value for the reason that lack of a check on returns 
precludes any exact determination of results. As a 
rule, they must have some intrinsic interest to be pre¬ 
served. 

A good instance of this—it is also an example 
of the tendency of the savings department to appro¬ 
priate the best ideas in any bank’s advertising—is the 
pocket atlas of the world now used by many banks for 
general distribution. 

One Chicago trust company issued this atlas to ex¬ 
ploit its letters-of-credit. School teachers often make 
European trips, so the book was sent to all the prin¬ 
cipals and teachers of the public schools. Within a 
month the bank was overwhelmed with requests for 
it from parents of school children, who wanted, of 
course, the maps and the other information it con¬ 
tained. The bank met the issue by turning it into a 
savings booklet and preparing a new atlas to advertise 
its foreign business. 


o6 


GETTING SAVINGS DEPOSITS 


The home savings bank has been widely used as a 
means of securing new accounts, but there seems no 
limit to its further exploitation. In this mail cam¬ 
paign already referred to, its use was incidental to the 
real purpose of reaching “prospects’' by direct adver- 


IHU OM TO-HOBROW 


A* the b ^* b o r l Da n y— we 
jen to ' day Savings Depart- 

de P° sit ° r - ^ ,0 ' 

te Tsk tor one ot our 1 
ba^k. <or the ho^ e or ° 

We keep the Ke ' - ,• aC 

| CO “"” ‘if* •-»!« COr ' S ' d ' 
•> °" e ' 

UH 1.0 KC0*«0»« lM - 

Bo yal Trust Co.— 
Bin* 


Vacations paid for by 

drawing ahead on your 
pay are not satisfactory. I 
It pays to provide for I 
such things in a regular! 
plan of saving. 

Deposit a fixed amount 
.with us every pay day —a 
idollarorinore. 3s interest 

>yal Trust Co. 
Bank 

it Insurance Bldg., 169 Jackson 

Kst.blllh.4 l»*l. A State Bank 
is O. WII BUR. Pruldeot. 

** ‘ "-I_ 


With a desert ahead 

°' ,ou ° n your journey 
you would save enough of 
your supplies to surely 
take you across it. 

With Old age ahead, 

bringing sickness and loss 
of employment are you 
going to spend all y on 
earn as you go along ? 

Start a saving* account 

small WC We,C0 ®e 

small deposits as well as 

Mnn^ ODes- ^ interest. 

tiat* open ,0 «* *n. 

lo o p. m. 


1 Royal Insuran** 


Bids- 


169 Jackson B,y4 


» IN r. TO ACK, T icerri*. i 

LoHN W. THOMAS. AMI. 

tklog Accooota-- Saving* Acco# 
l»—keel EMU Laao*— Traataer* 


000 . 000-00 1 


gj. 000 . 0 O 0 - 

^4 S»rpb~ profit-— -*'* - ' 0.000.000 




l« 8 V. 


Royal Trust Co._I 

Bank 

BilKiag, 

'» t itORwa iMItrafi 

|SOL . A , 

lAMU WIL ,^ * ““ •***■ 

“ST* r uacm?£?L 

rnw •. *** '*WI ao 4 OasAw 

r . V1 °“ w ™°*aa AmCSSSm. 


t “ “^WO*** A.- 


Ca«h»«- 

€•**>*'• 


Advertisements that set forth definite points for savings accounts—good examples used 

in a specific campaign for business 

tising. Usually, however, it is distributed by solicitors 
who make a desk-to-desk canvass of the business dis¬ 
trict and individual appeals to workmen in factories. 
Rarely does the “boss” of either factory or office object 
to such a canvass, the steadying influence of a savings 
account making employers eager to encourage the habit 
in the ranks of their workers. 













BOOKLETS AND OTHER METHODS 


67 


r 


How To 
Save 




O AVING begins at home, 
^ and the foundation of 
a savings account is the 
determination to save reg¬ 
ularly. This bank has pre¬ 
pared a household expense 
account book which will 
help any one to save sys¬ 
tematically. It is of special 
value to the heads of fam¬ 
ilies. Copies will be fur¬ 
nished free on personal 
application. 

All savings deposits made 
on or before April 10 will 
bear interest from April 1. 

HarrisTrust& 
Savings Bank 

Organized as N. W. Harris 4 Co. 1882 
Incorporated 1997 

Capital and Surplus, $1,500,000.00 

Marquette Bldg., Chicago 
N. W. Corner Dearborn and Adams Sts. 


v: 


a 


J 


How To 

Save 


First: Make a definite 
allowance for a savings 
deposit—as large as pos¬ 
sible—before any expend¬ 
iture is made from the 
regular income. 

Then: Keep a careful 
account of income and ex¬ 
penses in order to avoid 
waste. 

The household expense 
account book prepared by 
this bank will help anyone 
to follow this system. 
Copies furnished free on 
personal application. All 
savings deposits made 
on or before April 10 will 
bear interest from April 1. 

HarrisTrust& 
Savings Bank 

Organized as N. W. Harris 4 Co.* 1882 
Incorporated 1907 

Capital and Surplus, $1,500,000,00 

Marquette Bldg., Chicago 
y ^f>*. W . Cor ner Dearborn and Adams 


How a household account book campaign was used to bring prospective depositors into 

a new savings bank 


























SAVINGS ALLOWANCE BEFORE YOU SPEN D 


68 


GETTING SAVINGS DEPOSITS 


























































































































BOOKLETS AND OTHER METHODS 


69 


In placing individual banks, it is important that 
the solicitors be employed directly by the bank and 
that they be carefully selected. Accounts purchased 
from the makers of these banks—who sometimes con¬ 
duct the campaign with their own solicitors—often 
prove unprofitable. The effort of the solicitors is to 
place as many banks as possible. They feel no respon¬ 
sibility to the institution they nominally represent. And 
this bringing of a middleman into relations so intimate 
as those of a bank with its depositors is a thing relig¬ 
iously to be avoided. The personality of the bank must 
impress itself on every depositor from the first intro¬ 
duction if he is to become an asset of the institution. 

Many other mediums of publicity are available for a 
saving bank. Theater programs, street-car cards, bill¬ 
boards, suburban time-tables, bill-heads for newspaper 
distributors, factory pay envelopes, calendars and blot¬ 
ters, all have >their place in bank advertising, though 
their ability must be determined in each case by local 
conditions. They are valuable chiefly as auxiliaries 
of a campaign based on newspaper advertising or 
direct appeal by letters and booklets. 

Many Opportunities for Advertising a Bank's Busi¬ 
ness Are Often Overlooked 

In general the advertising value of a bank’s func¬ 
tions is overlooked by many institutions. The post- 
office and express companies are allowed almost to 
monopolize the issue of foreign and domestic money 
orders. If this business involved a loss instead of a 
profit, banks in the smaller cities could afford to reach 
out for it because it would bring into touch hundreds 
of potential savings depositors who never enter their 
doors now. Bank drafts and foreign exchange are 


70 


GETTING SAYINGS DEPOSITS 


cheaper than postal or express money orders, but the 
uajority of people who send money by mail are ignor¬ 
ant of the fact. 

Summing up, the vital things in savings bank pub¬ 
licity are that it “say something”—that its appeal be 
based on safety, service and profit for depositors rather 
than on smug reflections on thrift as a character-build¬ 
er—that it reach out for the “prospect’s” point of con¬ 
tact and interest him before it tries to convince him— 
that reasons and figures back up every assertion not 
self-evident—in short, that it recognize banking as i 
business governed by ordinary business laws and sus¬ 
ceptible to the same influences which make for success 
in marketing any product. 


Find the Need 

S TAND in a window facing Broad¬ 
way—look out upon the multitude 
passing, each one your willing custom¬ 
er if you knew precisely how to appeal 
to his specific want. In the brain of 
every person in that cosmopolitan 
throng exists some vulnerable spot 
where your advertisements could find 
response. 

Think on it—study the question. 
Find the point of contact. 



Part III 


HOW TO SECURE COMMER¬ 
CIAL ACCOUNTS 


MISCELL¬ 

ANEOUS 

SERVICE 


DRAFTS 

OR 

TRANS¬ 
FER OF 
MONEY 


GEN¬ 

ERAL 

ADVER¬ 

TISING 


MISCELLANEOUS 


NEWSPAPERS 


THEATER 

PROGRAMS 


BOOKLETS 


BOOKLETS 


PERSONAL 

LETTERS 


] 


STATEMENTS | 

AND FIGURES 1 

ESSAYS 


] 



EFFECT¬ 

IVE 

PUBLI¬ 

CITY 



CHECKING 

CONVENIENCES 



STABILITY AND 
STRENGTH 


How to win the commercial account through publicity campaigns that bring results 

is graphically portrayed in this chart 






















































































































The Business Man s Ally 

Y OU want business men as commer¬ 
cial depositors—every successful re¬ 
tailer, manufacturer, middle man in your 
reach. 

Invite them, appeal to them, convince 
them that they need your bank as a busi¬ 
ness ally—in the language of business. 

You have certain services to offer them— 
services based on the necessities, the op¬ 
portunities, the emergencies they en¬ 
counter daily in their stores and factories. 

Put this fact before them. Handle it 
from their point of view. 

Advertise! 

Employ like judgment, like knowledge and 
care in planning your advertising cam¬ 
paign that you apply to the framing of 
your policies on investments or extensions 
of credit. Prove your business possibili¬ 
ties before you launch your publicity. 
Plan your campaign before buying an inch 
of space. 

Aim for a definite mark. Hit the bulls- 
eye of your prospective depositor’s needs 





CHAPTER X 

The Talking Points in a Bank Account 

The commercial bank presents an advertising para¬ 
dox. Though its chief appeal is to business men 
trained to vivid methods of exploiting their wares, the 
typical national bank, in seeking accounts, neglects 
the main agency by which its prospective customers 
make their markets—forceful, original, creative adver¬ 
tising. ' 

Accounts of business men—loans to them—discounts 
and collections for them—transfer of money by tele¬ 
gram or drafts—in one word, service to merchants and 
manufacturers—is the first and most important con¬ 
cern of a commercial bank. Then follow its relations 
with like institutions in other cities—the reserve de¬ 
posits, the foreign business and collections of country 
correspondents, while the out-of-town bank desires the 
collections and local business of the central de¬ 
pository. 

Because the measure of a commercial bank’s success 
lies in its ability to attract business men, to secure 
their accounts, supplement their factory or merchandiz¬ 
ing machines with its own activities and use them to 
employ its deposits at productive wages—because, too, 
its utilities in this field can most profitably be ex- 


73 







74 GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


ploited, attention will be given first to the effort to get 
into touch with its business clients. 

Now, every merchant’s point of contact—every man¬ 
ufacturer’s, too—is selling. He lives in an atmosphere 
of marketing—the language of sales is the tongue he 


fr 




The young business man 

wko Las demonstrated ability 
successfully to conduct a small 
business will receive special a&en~ 
tion and consideration from 

The National Bank 

OF THE 

REPUBLIC 


BOARD OF DIRECTORS 


ROBERT MATHER 

Pres. Rock Island Company 

LOUIS F. SWIFT 

Pres. Swift & Company 

JOHN V.FARWELLJr. 

of J.V.FarwellCo. 

E. B. STRONG 

Capitalist 

FRANK O. LOWDEN 

Attorney 


JOHN R. MORRON 

Pres. Diamond Glue Co. 

CHAS. H. CONOVER 

Vice-Pres. Hibbard, Spencer, 
Bartlett fit Co. 

FRANK E. VOGEL 

Vice-Pres. Siegel, Cooper & Co. 

HENRY SIEGEL 

Pres. Simpson-Crawford Go- 
New York 


ROLLIN A. KEYES 

Franklin MacVeagh & Co. 

JOHN A. LYNCH 

President 

J. B. GREENHUT 

Capitalist. Peoria 

H. W. HEINRICHS 

Vice-Pres. M. D. Wells Co. 

W. T. FENTON 

Vice-President 


Ik 


Capital, Surplus and Profits, $3,000,000. La Salle and Monroe Streets 


An advertisement designed to correct the wrong impression held by small depositors that 

their business is not wanted 


knows best. His own thought processes, a hundred out¬ 
side influences, combine to make him a human tuning 
fork responsive to that one note—sales. To reach, per¬ 
suade, convince him, the appeal succeeds best which is 
vibrant with selling argument. 




























TALKING POINTS FOR DEPOSITS 


75 


Commercial credit is frankly a commodity, bought 
and sold under the same merchandizing rules as dyna* 
mos or ten-penny nails. Barring a few exceptions, how¬ 
ever, so hedged about with traditions of conservatism 
and dignity is this oldest of banking functions that 
credit merchants limit their public announcements to 
skimped rehearsals of their resources and offerings. 

Most of them, indeed, do less. Buying space liber¬ 
ally, they display the name of their institution, its 
capital, resources and roster of officers, leaving the 
painstaking reader to suggest to himself that they re¬ 
ceive money on deposit, make loans and discounts, buy 
and sell exchange. By the same limitations, a railroad’s 
advertising would stop with its title, its mileage and 
principal terminals—and expect tourists to pack its 
unheralded excursions and eighteen-hour trains. Just 
such publicity was affected by the big trunk lines fif¬ 
teen years ago—before they discovered the travel- 
creating quality of national advertising, embodying 
specific, selling appeal. 

The Tendency on the Part of Bankers to Argue 

Against Publicity 

“But a commercial bank has so little to advertise. 
Everyone knows what a checking account is, and that 
we loan money, make discounts, sell drafts and letters 
of credit. A savings bank has a hundred arguments 
where we have one. Besides, a savings institution 
must solicit people who can’t be canvassed profitably 
except through newspapers or the mails. 

“I doubt the policy of going into particulars about 
our business or blowing our own horn too loudly. Of 
course, we print our report every time the comptroller 
makes a call, and we aim to keep our name before the 


76 GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


public. As for getting new accounts by advertising- 
commercial business isn’t secured that way.” 

Thus argued the assistant cashier in charge of the 
publicity of an important western bank. I had asked 
him why he restricted himself to an over-displayed 
weekly card and occasional stodgy statements of con¬ 
ditions—these last typed no differently from the re¬ 
ports of a dozen other institutions printed after each 
call of the comptroller on the same financial pages of 
identical newspapers. I wanted to know if there was 
design or conscious purpose—most of all, pulling power 
—in his advertisements and the others compounded 
from the common formula by his competitors. His 
answer informed me—he had neither a plan nor a defin¬ 
ite understanding of the problem his newspaper cam¬ 
paign should grapple with. 

How to Solve the Problem of Advertising Effect- 
ively for Commercial Deposits 

What is that problem? What must a bank’s adver¬ 
tising man consider in his publicity campaign for com¬ 
mercial accounts? 

The first element to determine is the existence—or 
the lack—in the community of potential depositors 
enough to justify a campaign. Eliminating the smaller 
towns where the banker is acquainted with all the busi¬ 
ness men and can bring personal influence to bear in 
securing their accounts, every city furnishes a numer¬ 
ous and neglected company of small merchants and 
producers who need, but have never been taught to 
use, the tools a commercial bank has to sell. 

The bank’s business-building service—credit, advice, 
discounts, collections—and its lively desire to add little 
depositors as well as millionaires are both unknown 


TALKING POINTS FOR DEPOSITS 


77 


THE YOUNG 

BUSINESS MAN 

- HIS bank is distinctively a busi¬ 
ness man s bank. It bas made a 
specialty of the banking needs of 
business men and therefore knows 
_ their requirements. It is in a posi¬ 
tion to render them every service and to safe¬ 
guard their interests under all conditions. 
\ • 

The young business man who has demonstrated 
ability to successfully conduct a small business 
will receive special consideration. 

DIRECTORS 

Peter Larson J. D. Farrell James C. Twoby 
Levi Ankeny W. D. Vincent D. W. Twoby 

Thomas F. Wren 

CAPITAL $500,000 

The Old National Bank 

of Spokane 


Here is an announcement which appeals directly to the young business man 
and thus pulls a special class of accounts 










78 GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


to them. Instead they patronize the savings institu¬ 
tions which offer nothing except safe storage for their 
surplus capital and three per cent interest, but which 
exploit these points persistently and intelligently. 

Every banker has led such depositors into the com¬ 
mercial fold, when circumstances singled them out for 


OTTI WHY Spokane businesa men 
should do their business with 

The Old National 

•I Spokaa* 

Became, G, It* ehareholdcr* have large 
holdings in the city and surrounding country 
and their interests are mutual. 

Because. G, The strength of this bank lie* 
not alone in it* capital, surplus and resource* 
but in the character and financial responsi¬ 
bility o( the men who conduct its affairs. 

Because. G. Its business is governed with 
that conservatism, combined with enterprise 
and up to date methods, which make for 
soundness and satisfactory hanking service. 

Because, G. It enjoys the patronage and 
confidence of many of the leading firms, 
corporations and individual* in Spokane, and 
therefore knows the banking needs of busi¬ 
ness men and is in a position to render them 
the service (hey require. 

Because. G, Intimately associated with all 
sound business is the sound bank. It com¬ 
bines the working capital of the community 
and applies it where most needed, while its 
strength promote* the stability of all th* 
undertakings of its patron*._ 

DIRECTORS 

P.ter Lsteoe Levi Atlii, 
J. D. Psrrefl ifisti C Te.t, 
TU.n F Viia W. 0. Viaeesf 
D. W. T » o k y 


To pull one specific class of depositors the advertisement at the left was used to 
good effect. The mailing leaflet at the right admirably sums up the 
bank’s case with business men 

him from the mass of their fellows. Conclusive evi¬ 
dence that much business is diverted from the commer¬ 
cial banks is afforded by the circumstances that the 
seven and a half million individual savings accounts in 
the United States average well beyond $400 each. 
Even when a savings auxiliary is maintained as a 



FRATERNAL 

ACCOUNTS 

REASURERS of fraternal 

or religious eocicti** are 
invited to consult u» re¬ 
garding th* *a(« and profit¬ 
able disposition of fund* 
is their custody. Th* 
officer* will be pleased to explain th* ad¬ 
vantage* of Savings Account* for fund* of 
this character and th* maimer th* aam* 
may b* conducted apart from tha checking 
account, Q All deposit* made with thi* 
bank, even though placed at interest. are 
subject to withdrawal on demand. 

UNITED STATES DEPOSITARY 

Capital and Surplus, $600,000 

The Old National Bank 

Tha Marble Bank Building 


































TALKING POINTS FOR DEPOSITS 


79 


“feeder/’ inertia or failure to grasp the possibilities 
of the situation robs the commercial department of 
many profitable accounts. 

The Chance Offered a Banking Institution to Co¬ 
operate with the Small Merchant 

Your growing merchant or producer is not satisfied 
with a savings account after discovery that his work¬ 
ing capital has almost doubled value as a commercial 
deposit—at once a checking account and an earnest 
to the bank of his ability to repay any loans made to 
carry on his store or factory. This use of a bank as 
the reserve power in his undertakings—the limited 
partner tiding him over seasons when outlay distances 
income—is the last essential thing a young business 
man learns. 

In the equipment of factory or store, he has the 
service of machinery and future experts who appeal to 
him weekly or monthly in trade journals, in letters and 
booklets, with pictures and positive arguments. 

These educational efforts are supplemented with per¬ 
sonal interviews should he indicate the least interest 
in their devices. 

But on the least tangible, albeit the most crucial, 
side of his business training—knowledge of the serv¬ 
ice a bank could render him—chance is his only school¬ 
master. The machinery houses pursue him—the banks 
hold aloof and oppress his imagination with huge piles 
of granite, forbidding intimacy. 

Right here opens a definite field of creative publicity 
for commercial banks—the education of “the little 
man” to the use and profit of commercial credit. It 
must be real advertising, however, driving straight to 
his needs, proffering concrete service, proving the dif- 


80 GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


ference between savings-acconnt interest and interest 
on monthly balances is profitably lost in the gain of 
additional working capital, convincing him that no 
other bank will serve so well, so cheerfully. 

A Neglected Field for the Expansion of a Bank's 
Deposits and Building Up Business 

Service—that is the advertising password to the 
attention of the beginner in trade or industry. Study¬ 
ing a group of a dozen “young businesses” recently, I 
learned that in nearly every case the suggestion that 
a bank’s aid should be enlisted to extend the field or 
volume of business done came, not from the proprietor 
himself or from any bank, but from some friendly man¬ 
ufacturer or the house supplying raw materials. 

Every one of these young men had looked on loans 
as a special favor the bank reserved for big depositors. 
The idea that the cashier would welcome him as a bor¬ 
rower no less gladly than as a depositor had not oc¬ 
curred to any one of them. In their unfamiliarity with 
banking functions, in the like ignorance and tmidity 
of hundreds of small tradesmen and producers in every 
considerable city, lies the advertising opportunity of 
the commercial bank. 


He Who Waits 

T HE door is closed to the man who 
waits for it to open itself, the man 
who waits for someone to open it for 
him—the man who waits for anyonej’to 
do his work: it opens to the man who 
is pressing steadily onward. 




CHAPTER XI 

Framing up Advertisements 

Assuming that the community holds enough prospec¬ 
tive commercial depositors to warrant a certain ex¬ 
penditure in securing them, how can they be reached i 

Two methods suggest themselves: 

1. Newspaper publicity. 

2. A direct campaign conducted by mail. 

With a limited appropriation, better results can bt 
obtained, in the majority of cases, by direct appeal 
through a series of personal letters and booklets sent to 
prospective depositors. Preparation of such a mailing 
list would entail no great difficulty—from the city and 
telephone directories and the individual acquaintance 
of the bank’s employees, a preliminary list could be 
prepared and the standing of each prospect arrived at 
by investigation if no easier means are offered. 

To this list, a series of form letters—on the bank’s 
regular stationery with a passable imitation of the 
president’s signature appended—could be sent at a 
cost hardly more than nominal. This is advertising 
at a minimum only. If the names approached or went 
beyond a thousand in number, booklets could be used 
profitably as enclosures, both to elaborate the argu¬ 
ment of the letter and to supply commercial informa- 


81 







82 GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


tion—the laws governing contracts, for instance—with 
which the prospect might not be familiar. 

It must be admitted that no studied campaign of 
this sort has ever been attempted, though the results 
obtained by various banks with occasional letters to 
such a list of prospects have been out of all proportion 
to the outlay. The advantages are obvious; there is 
little or no waste circulation, which in newspaper pub¬ 
licity is enormous; the letter is certain to receive atten¬ 
tion for the reason that no man, however bombarded 
with circulars, will ignore a message from a strong 
local bank; the appeal can be closely adapted to his 
business needs; and the plan is flexible in scope. 

On the other hand, business men, more than any 
other class in a community, read advertisements with 
care, either for the information they give or with an 
eye for features adaptable to their own affairs. In a 
city, then, with two or more newspapers of circulation 
and influence, a newspaper campaign in which each 
announcement embodies selling appeal can hardly fail 
of results. The experience of progressive banks east 
and west proves this beyond question. 

Special Points of Service to Be Emphasized in 
Appealing to Business Men 

Choice of mediums, of course, should be limited to 
the newspapers addressed to business men, though it 
should be remembered that few of the prospective 
depositors aimed at give much time to the stock mar¬ 
ket or the fluctuations of cotton and grain. Almost 
without exception, where morning and evening news¬ 
papers are equally interesting and successful, the morn¬ 
ing issues will be found the best medium for commer¬ 
cial banking announcements. 


FRAMING ADVERTISEMENTS 


83 


What has a commercial bank to advertise ? Whether 
the exploiting be done in newspapers or by mail, serv¬ 
ice is the advantage to be emphasized to business men. 
Security of deposits is an argument not to be neglected. 


ESTABLISHED 

ISSI 



UWHED STATES 

DEPOSITARY 


BUSINESS BUILDING 

Thi» bank will assist any man of business capac¬ 
ity to build up a profitable business in Battle 
Creek. Fifty-seven years* of banking experience 
under every condition qualifies us to pilot your 
affairs along safe lines. 


Old Na^ 

B/P 


ESTABLISHED 
135 S 



UNITED SKIES 

DEPOSITARY 


BUSINESS SUCCESS 


Th* reports of Duo soJ Brsdstreet, the greet commercial i 
cUa. prove that there are more business failures than bu*inuMSUO> 
ceases, due mostly to wrong judgment and inexperience. For flftjr- 
eeven years chit Benk has had the cioseet relations with soccwrftfifl 
business men and local enterprises. We know our ground thorough 
|y our experience Is at tbs service of our depositors. 


ESTABLISHED 
1861 


ESTABLISHED 



UNITED STATES j 
DEPOSITARY 



BANKING CREDIT 

Credit and confidence grow with business relations, 
and when once established with a strong bank, is addi¬ 
tional working capital for a successful enterprise. Our 
long experience with local business conditions enables us 
to assist you in the right way and at the right time. 

Old National 
Bank 


iTIONAI 

m 


UNITED STATES 

DEPOSITARY 


The Critical Time 

To every business man there comes a day when he 
is not quite sure which way to turn or what step to take. 
To that man we offer the experience only obtained by 
fifty-seven years' contact with local busiije®? conditions 
and the services of a strong bank. 

Old National 

BANK 



A checking account is a great convenience for 
women, as it furnishes an accurate record of the 
household and general expenses. The returned 
check is always a good receipt for every bill paid. 

Old National 

BANK 


Pointed advertisements from a city campaign for commercial deposils; used effectively 
to urge the concrete aid a strong bank can give its depositors 



































84 GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


for the small manufacturer or merchant needs to be 
convinced that his money will be safe. As a rule, how¬ 
ever, commercial banks are the oldest in the commun¬ 
ity, their prestige is established and their capital and 
surplus spell insurance against disaster. 

Even so, this honorable history, the part the insti¬ 
tution has borne in the development of the city and its 
industries, how it has weathered panics and helped to 
allay them, its identification with the solid business 
elements of the city, its growth and resources can all 
be used as arguments to impress the commercial “pros¬ 
pect” and offset the concessions which newer banks 
may offer to secure his account. 

The business man wants, not only security for his 
balances, but also assurance that in times of stress 
his bank will be able as well as willing to stand behind 
him. He hasn’t always formulated this desire, and it 
is well to remind him of it when explaining that past 
performances are the best measure of what a bank will 
do in the future. Government supervision—for a na¬ 
tional bank—can be exploited to advantage as an addi¬ 
tional safeguard to depositors. The national bank 
which has made the most conspicuous success of news¬ 
paper publicity in the United States makes a point of 
announcing the semi-annual visits of the national bank 
examiner with a significant exposition of what such in¬ 
spection means to its patrons. 


Eggs in Several Baskets 

S MALL loans widely distributed 
bring the best results in banking. 




CHAPTER XII 

A Bank’s Services as a Business-Puller 

For small traders and producers with savings ac¬ 
counts, reluctance to give up the guaranteed interest 
is one bar to entrance to the commercial fold—a reluc¬ 
tance which the bank’s publicity must overcome. The 
only way to do it is to deal candidly with the condition. 
If the bank pays interest' on weekly or monthly bal¬ 
ances, emphasis must be laid on that circumstance and, 
to offset the difference in the rates, the advantages 
of a checking account may be enlarged upon. 

The safety from loss which checks insure, their 
convenience and time-saving qualities, their cleanli¬ 
ness, the commercial prestige which paying by check 
gives the beginner in business—these are all arguments 
so familiar to bankers that they forget the ordinary 
man and woman has never stopped to tabulate and 
weigh them. Checks mean one thing to the manufac¬ 
turer, another to the retailer, still another to the pro¬ 
fessional man and something quite different to the 
woman who has household or personal expenses to 
meet from a fixed allowance. 

To all of these, however, they offer one striking serv¬ 
ice, without charge—the accounting and auditing of all 
transactions involving payment of money. In effect, 

8s 














86 GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


the bank keeps books for each individual among its 
patrons—a “selling point” of which too little has been 
made by commercial institutions, and which would ap¬ 
peal vividly to the harassed housekeeper or the pro¬ 
fessional man who never seems able to “keep his ac¬ 
counts straight.” 

For the money he does not need immediately, the 
certificate of deposit pays equal interest and possesses 
“talking points” the ordinary savings account cannot 
muster. It is immediately negotiable through any 
bank, it has no restrictions like the sixty-day rule, it is 
not subject to arbitrary interest periods like the sav¬ 
ings account. Properly presented, on this one question 
of interest alone, the argument for the commercial bank 
as the depository of a temporary surplus is convincing. 

How the Business Man May Profit by the 
Advantages a Bank Offers 

All the commercial activities of the bank should be 
brought into the campaign to clinch the impression 
that the bank is a real, active, valuable ally to busi¬ 
ness men, not merely the selfish money lender and 
guardian of funds intrusted to it. 

Discounts, both of domestic paper and exporters’ 
bills, commercial letters of credit, transfers of money 
by telegraph or cable, drafts, bank money orders, col¬ 
lections—all these services can be brought into the 
building up of the idea that merchants and manufac¬ 
turers cannot make the most of their capital and oppor¬ 
tunities in dealing with any bank but the one designed 
for them and existing to satisfy their needs. 

Advice on general or trade conditions, counsel on in¬ 
vestments, help in the securing of capital for exten¬ 
sions, are all services which banks give depositors but 


BUSINESS-PULLING SERVICES 


87 


fail properly to exploit. The directors are marshalled 
in all the advertising as pillars of the institution’s 
strength and security, guarantee of its methods and 
loans. Nothing is made, however, of the fact that the 
board’s weekly meeting is a clearing-house of informa¬ 
tion and opinion concerning current events affecting 
business, or that the president and officials store up 
this wisdom for the benefit of depositors. 

The advertisements exploiting specific services such 
as checking accounts, certificates of deposit, transfer 
of money by draft, money order or telegraph, letters of 
credit, and advice on investments may be framed to 
have universal appeal to all the classes from which the 
bank can draw patrons. The special conveniences and 
services maintained for women and the advantages of 
checking accounts for them need separate exploitation. 
What was said about the handling of women as pros¬ 
pects and patrons in the article on savings bank pub 
iicity applies in the main to a commercial bank. 

The Importance of Winning the Complete Con¬ 
fidence of Customers of a Bank 

Campaigns usually begin with explanation of the 
sources of the bank’s strength and the security af 
forded depositors. This may or may not be the wisest 
plan. For a new bank undoubtedly it is best. For one 
long established, it would seem the better way to 
olunge directly for the prospect’s point of contact— 
“What will the bank do for me?”—and follow up the 
Jengthening ranks of arguments with statements set¬ 
ting forth the reasons for the bank’s stability. 

Experts generally agree that the man who prepares the 
advertisements should be satisfied with a tentative plan 
and should begin by exploiting that specific service 


88 


GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


which appeals to him most strongly as the most attrac¬ 
tive thing the bank has to offer at the moment. That 
there are seasons in bank advertising as well as in the 
marketing of drygoods has been shown, and can scarcely 
be emphasized too strongly. News value in advertise¬ 
ments is a thing not lightly to be sacrificed to the de¬ 
sire to see everything on paper before the contracts for 
space are signed. 

In general, cultivation of the confidence of the com¬ 
munity in the banker’s judgment is admirable adver¬ 
tising. The offer of free advice on investments—espe¬ 
cially if the bank has a bond and investment department 
—will establish touch with many perplexed prospects. 
Frank explanation that this free advice is offered be¬ 
cause it is to the interest of the bank to guard the com¬ 
munity from economic losses in “get-rich-quick” ven¬ 
tures will add convincing quality to such appeal. With 
the current craze for investment in wild-cat mining 
and industrial “stocks” sweeping millions of dollars 
out of the pockets of otherwise thrifty tradesmen and 
wage-earners, it becomes almost an obligation on the 
part of bankers to guard their neighbors from the col¬ 
lapse which has already set in. 

Convincing “Essays” That Have Won Business 
and Made Profits for the Institution 

The essentially different ways in which a newspaper 
campaign may take shape are shown by the advertising 
of two of the few American banks which have made 
studied and persistent efforts to secure commercial de¬ 
posits and exploit their resources and services to busi¬ 
ness men. The first is a good example of the cam¬ 
paign which depends for its effect on frank discussion 
of the bank’s policies, colored where possible by refer- 


BUSINESS-PULLING SERVICES 


89 


ence to local or national happenings. All of the adver¬ 
tisements reproduced in this issue are announcements 
of this institution, which merits its title of 4 ‘the best- 
advertised bank in America.” 

To the small merchant it addresses these vivid para¬ 
graphs over its name and a Line noting that it is a 

United States, a state and a cit^ depository. 

BANKING-DO YOU DO ANY! 

If not, why not? 

Did it ever occur to you that a bank account, even 

though it may be a small one, is the safest means of doing 

business? Your checks are the best receipts for all bills 
paid, and your funds will be neither lost nor stolen from 
our vaults. 

It only requires a minimum balance of $100 with us, 
and we will obligate ourselves to keep your finances 
straight and furnish you with the necessary check books 
and deposit books free of charge. 

If you are not accustomed to banking, just call and talk 
it over with our cashier. 

Here is one of a number of convincing little essays 
on the value of a checking account in preventing losses 
from unreceipted bills and other leaks. 

ADVANTAGES OF A BANK ACCOUNT, 
HOWEVER SMALL IT MAY BE 

It is well to pay bills promptly, but not to pay the same 
bill twice. Sometimes bookkeepers, by mistake, send out 
bills after they have been paid. If you pay by check, how¬ 
ever, the canceled checks are returned to you and can be 
produced as receipts. 

Checking accounts are, therefore, more than a con¬ 
venience. They are an insurance against overpayment. 
Every man or woman who pays bills should do so with 
checks. 

Your checking account will be welcomed at this bank, 
where you are assured of absolute security and the most 
courteous service. 

Service is the keynote of this confident appeal to 
business men: 


90 GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


You will always find us willing to help you wherever we 
can in the development of your business. 

If ever we cannot do what you want, it will not be 
through lack of desire or effort on our part, but because 
our business judgment—based on our experience—tells us 
that it would not be safe banking. 

We invite checking accounts—small or large—as well as 
saving accounts. 

The security guaranteed to depositors by the Na¬ 
tional bank act is directly and tersely put: 

The Federal Banking laws make every stockholder of 
this bank liable to depositors for twice the amount of 
stock owned. 

Our capital is $500,000, our surplus $179,000, making a 
total security of $1,179,000. Add to this the management of 
affairs by our efficient officers and directors and semi¬ 
annual inspection by the National bank examiners, and 
you can feel secure in placing your account with this bank. 

These are four brief announcements quoted because 
they are brief. Other advertisements take as their 
texts the President’s message, the Stensland and Hip¬ 
pie failures, the San Francisco catastrophe, the visit 
of the National bank examiner, the amendment to the 
national banking act, the growth of deposits as indica¬ 
tion of public approval, the question of the safety oJ 
four per cent interest on time deposits, the hot weather 
—and twoscore other topics either seasonable or with 
news interest to them. One of the unique advertise¬ 
ments reproduces the oath of the directors on file at 
Washington engaging them to administer the affairs 
of the bank honestly and faithfully. 


Do Yours? 


T HE copy for an advertisement must 
bring arguments home. Every ad¬ 
vertisement must answer the question: 
“What will the banks do for me ?” 




CHAPTER XIII 

Essay Advertisements for Deposits 

Service to depositors is the basis of the appeal made 
by a commercial bank to prospective customers. How 
present this appeal? How exploit this service so that 
every merchant, manufacturer and non-producer po¬ 
tentially profitable to the bank will recognize it. 

Matter-of-fact answer to the question, “What will 
this bank do for me?” is not sufficient. The question 
itself must be suggested, the prospect’s unrealized need 
for the bank’s utilities formulated for him, the prac¬ 
tical aid the bank can give him convincingly set forth. 

In this respect the psychology of bank advertising 
differs but little from that underlying successful pub¬ 
licity for any labor-saving or profit-adding commodity 
or device. The bank has only to show the prospect 
how it will save him personally time and money, insure 
him against loss by theft, give him an extra book¬ 
keeping check on all transactions involving payment 
of cash, increase his resources by loans and discounts, 
act as his agent in distant cities, and effectively sup¬ 
plement his business activities in a dozen other ways— 
paying him meanwhile for the privilege—to have 
aroused self-interest, bringing him forthwith to the 
cashier’s window. 

91 










92 GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


That advertising is education is never so true as 
when the amazing utilities of a commercial bank are 
brought to the attention of traders and producers too 
occupied to make even a superficial study of banking 
functions and conscious of no reason why a bank is 
worth their study. Yet they would read with avidity 
and a keen eye to their own needs and possible profit, 
a series of brief essay-advertisements setting forth in 
interesting fashion the advantages and business aids 
some particular bank has to offer them. 


Specific Points to Be Considered Carefully in Writ¬ 
ing an Advertisement 

•I call them essay-advertisements because they should 
be frankly advertisements and something more than 
the usual dull rehearsal of what the bank stands ready 
to do for its depositors. By “brief” I mean not more 


To Do 
Banking 


INo - matter how email your 
bualnei* may be, have a bank 
account! 

IThe email merchant Mio has- 
a bank account establishes 
tils credit, has safety tor .hi* 
cast) and pays his bills with 
check in a business manner. 

{YOU are Invited to open an 
account here today. 

^Capital and Surplus, 

9675.000.00 

{Resources, 95,288,31100 

Commercial & Farmers 
National Bank 




Or 

Checks 


received In business should 
be deposited promptly—temp¬ 
tation often causes a loss of 
cash when kept In store or 
Office. 

{Losses on checks are fre¬ 
quent when held too long be¬ 
fore depositing. 

{Safety tor both says "open 
an account with Baltimore's 
oldest bank, established In 
1810, and deposit often." 

I Deposits over 94,000,000. 


Commercial & Farmers 
National Bank 


Unabli to 
Strike 


a Cash Balance It's because 
you pay small bills with cash 
Instead of Check, and have no 
record of the transaction. 


07 = 

“YCDQIh 

=£01 


HA checking account with thla 
Bank, established In 1810, will 
overcome • the difficulty and 
aid you in building up a sub¬ 
stantial bank account. 

{You are Invited to transact 
vour banking here. 

{Deposits, 94,000,000, 
{Resources, 95,288,311. 



HOWARD AND GERMAN BW 


HOWARD AND GERMAN BTS. 


HOWARD AND GERMAN 6T3. 


Three of a series of advertisements urging the value of checks and checking accounts 
in the conduct of business—specific arguments dealing with the safety, 
time-saving and insurance against losses afforded 
by a checking account 






























WINNING ESSAY ADVERTISEMENTS 93 



large ones are welcome here— 
you need not wait until your 
business has assumed great 
proportions before opening an 
account. Do so today. 

tOur patrons, regardless of 
the amount of business done, 
receive every courtesy Tn an 
matters of business Intrusted 
to us, and there is nothing 
In safe banking we cannot 
perform. 

tDeposits over fd,000.000. 


Commercial & Farmers 
National Bank 

HOWARD AND GERMAN STS. 


Another advantage 
in dealing with us is 
that you are not-too 
small for us, nol- We 
too large for you. 

We are fust as at¬ 
tentive , it) our deal¬ 
ings with the kmall 
depositor as with the 
large one. 

We incite checking 
accounts, issue Cer¬ 
tificates of Deposit, 
and buy and sell For¬ 
eign Exchange. 


Commercial & Farmers' 
National Bank 

HOWARD AND GERMAN STS. 


Made 

Convenient 


for air at this Bank, because 
there is no unnecessary red 
tape allowed to enter Into the 
transaction of business with 
our patrons. Our .theory is 
that .time is valuable tq all- 
concerned. 

flWe’re conveniently located, 
offer every up-to-date facil¬ 
ity for promptness in bank¬ 
ing—and wish to do business 
with you. 

fFor aecirrity—note our re¬ 
sources of over FIVE M1L- 
I.IONS. _ 

Commercial & Farmers 
National Bank 

HOWARD AND GERMAN STS. 



Appeals to the little business man setting forth the ease with which a commercial ac¬ 
count is opened and the desire of the bank to receive small accounts 


than two hundred words—not many less—of instruc¬ 
tion, framed with all the wit and skill and knowledge 
the man who writes them can command. To be read, 
they must be interesting as well as packed with infor¬ 
mation; for prospective depositors have been spoiled 
for stodgy stuff by the fascinating discourses which 
sell soap and baked beans, paint, buggies and wash¬ 
ing machines wherever newspapers and magazines 
penetrate. 

Make your advertising a serial story of the bank’s 
utilities—the functions of interest and profit to busi¬ 
ness men, to people with idle money, to professional 
men and women, to housewives with regular allow¬ 
ances or incomes of their own. Analyze your service 
to each class of depositors from the viewpoint of the 
depositor’s necessities or ambitions—then write of that 
service one phrase at a time. It will astonish you to 
discover that, though banking is your business, you 
can’t marshal on paper offhand more than four in five 



































94 GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


of the real and solid advantages the bank provides, cost 
free, for its customers. The fifth occurs to you later— 
or so it has occurred to most bank officials with whom 
I have talked. 

If trained bankers, mark you, need time to recall all 
the services rendered commercial depositors, certainly 
opportunity exists for enlightening and interesting the 
men just finding themselves in trade, industry or the 
professions as well as the thousands of non-producers 
shifting along with unhandy savings accounts because 
the safety, convenience and time-saving qualities of a 
checking account have never been presented to them. 

An Enumeration of the Services Offered by the 
Bank Will Appeal to Commercial Men 

Certain of these services touch only business men, 
such as discounts, collections, loans, while others are 
limited in their appeal only by the community’s tally 
of individuals having regular incomes, whether busi¬ 
ness or professional men or simply those “who toil not, 
neither do they spin,” having inherited wealth. 

Money storage is a function all banks have in com¬ 
mon. The most striking appeal for commercial depos¬ 
its, then, that a bank can make is its readiness to lend 
a depositor reasonable sums needed in the conduct or 
extension of his undertakings. Plain, frank speech 
touching these loans—the basis on which they are made 
—the desire of the bank to help every man who can 
satisfy its conditions—the necessity of its lending the 
greater portion of the money it holds for depositors— 
the reserve strength the right bank gives a business— 
would dispel much of the mystery which seems to put 
them beyond the reach of the “little men”—the very 
class of traders and producers the bank wishes to se- 


WINNING ESSAY ADVERTISEMENTS 95 


cure. To advertise such loans as “accommodations” 
or refer to them as “special consideration” only mys¬ 
tifies the man unused to banking practice. 

How many business men understand what is neces¬ 
sary to secure a line of credit at a bank ? A large ele¬ 
ment of the business of a certain firm of accountants 
consists in making examinations and preparing reports 
to be used as a basis for securing individual banking 
credit. Of the companies employing them, some have 
been borrowing money for ten or fifteen years. Yet 
they had never been able to formulate the rules govern¬ 
ing the extension of credit—requiring in .the end the 
help of a high-priced outsider to prepare information 
which the bank, unasked and for its own benefit, should 
have taught them how to secure. 

What the Keynote of Each Advertisement Should 
Be to Reach the Business Depositor 

Here, then, is the text for one of four advertisements 
in the series dealing with credits from the varying 
standpoints of the manufacturer, the wholesaler, the 
retailer, and the business man who markets things less 
tangible than merchandise. Deposits are the first aim 
of a commercial bank—or any other bank—and every 
advertisement should emphasize the opening of an ac¬ 
count as the entrance fee to the bank’s circle of privi¬ 
lege. 

After deposits, however, what are the conditions 
within their businesses entitling each of these men to 
loans during the seasons when expenditures outstrip 
income? They want to know, or they would want to 
know if they were familiar with the important uses of 
banking credit, and if their eligibility as borrowers 
had ever struck them. Here is their point of contact— 


96 GETTING COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS 


one of the many approaches existing for a commercial 
bank—but the information about credits, although the 
common property of all banking institutions, is locked 
away from the public without reason and made some¬ 
thing of a mystery. Why not use it intelligently, 
clearly, carefully, to secure the new depositors the bank 
desires? It is not likely to suggest new frauds to dis¬ 
honest persons for the reason that dishonest folk have 
already tested every weak point in a bank’s defenses. 

Discounts and collections are services more generally 
understood, yet in calling to the attention of potential 
depositors the bank’s facilities for these services, much 
information of value can be incorporated to give the 
advertisement the power of suggesting the bank’s util¬ 
ity to the prospect. Many young manufacturers, for 
instance, do not know how to sell so as to realize part 
of their investment immediately. 

Under pressure of competition, they grant terms 
which render their accounts virtually non-nego- 
tiable and difficult of collection when they fall due. To 
such men, a clear, vivid exposition of the conditions 
which must be complied with to give their bills receiv¬ 
able value as collateral would come as a welcome mes¬ 
sage and a trumpet-call to the cashier’s desk. 


Make Him at Home 

I F a depositor wishes business counsel; 

if a business man is in doubt about 
a proposed financial deal—make him 
feel free to call on “his” bank. No red 
tape—no formality—no waiting; all re¬ 
sources ready to back him—at once. 



Part IV 


HOW TO SECURE THE IN¬ 
DIVIDUAL ACCOUNT 



The factors involved in winning the individual depositor’s business are analyzed in 
this chart and described in detail in succeeding chapters 


* 






































































































Personality in Banking 

B E . personal in your appeal to men. 

In banking you are dealing with the 
personal affairs of your customers. With¬ 
out personal interest you will be handicap¬ 
ped in your campaign for business. 

Keep in touch with your patrons and with 
your prospects. Take the time to exer¬ 
cise a personal influence over the work of 
the bank, and so keep informed of its 
needs and its relations with your cus¬ 
tomers. 

Then put the personal appeal into your 
advertisements, into your letters and into 
your methods for soliciting business. 

In that way and no other can you be sure 
of reaching the individual—of influencing 
the personal will which somewhere, some¬ 
how, controls every business. 






CHAPTER XIV 

Personal Solicitation of Prospects 

Of the two hundred and eighty-six banks in New 
York City alone, it is probable that no two follow ex¬ 
actly the same method of soliciting accounts. 

In fact, it is only within comparatively recent years 
that the American banking house has seen fit to dis¬ 
card that “professional dignity” which prevents the 
solicitation of accounts in any way that suggests ad¬ 
vertising, for more practical and more modern meth¬ 
ods of increasing its business. 

The Windsor Trust Company is one of New York’s 
recently established financial institutions. It is not 
yet three years old. It is situated in the most fash¬ 
ionable residential district of the city, and has grown 
through the patronage of depositors first in that vicin¬ 
ity and later of depositors at a distance. 

How Names of Possible Customers Are Collected 
and Filed from Every Available Source 

In order to meet the demands of competition which, 
though dignified, is none the less alert, this company 
has adopted a method of advertising and of handling 
new accounts which has not belittled its “professional 
dignity,” but which has resulted and is resulting in « 


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100 GETTING INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTS 


rapidly increasing number of depositors from New 
York’s most exclusive business and social circles. 

The basis of this bank’s advertising system is a large 
card-filing cabinet which contains a list of over one 
hundred thousand names of people who may be con¬ 
sidered prospective patrons. This list of names has 
been collected from many and original sources and is 
divided into territorial 1 ‘sections,” designated by num¬ 
ber in their order of value to the bank. The first step 
was to hire a clerk to go over the New York directory 
and to select therefrom the names and addresses of 
the better class of people who live or do business 
within a given radius from the bank. This took six 
months to accomplish. From the leading hotels and 
apartment houses in the neighborhood were secured 
lists of names of permanent guests. 

From government reports the names of army officers 
were listed. This “advertising” list is kept up to date 



SIGNATURE 

'':-i -A* 

• • ' ^ , t '-I-';:V'.-V’-'y. • v . . . i 

ADDRESS 

’ i ;•••>,' V £p•. .• •• • 

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iv ; v.v"v.' 

BUSINESS 

-V* •!*v" , * , .^**ii^i***.** "•/i*. •^*.’**t"Jv*vI*.*V*"-**V* , */*i\*."*"*"*X*"***.*.*"’*\ 

INTRODUCED BY 

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PREVIOUS OR OTHER ACCT'S. 


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, ;• ; : -vy- 

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REMARKS 

OVER 

ACCOUNT 

OPENED 190 


•• • • . • ••••••• 


Form I: The signature card which the depositor signs on opening an account in the bank 













PERSONAL SOLICITATION 


101 



Form II: The ledger sheet on which is entered a full history of each account handled 


by a clerk assigned to this special duty. The main 
idea is to get names which have never been solicited by 
other institutions. 

At intervals the list of names in this cabinet is cir¬ 
cularized—not necessarily by circulars, but by per¬ 
sonal letters which call attention to the special fa¬ 
cilities which this company can offer to the addressee. 
Whenever the social rules permit, letters of introduc¬ 
tion may be used and personal calls may be made. In 
this way the complete “field” in which this bank may 
be presumed to have its greatest stronghold is kept 
in touch with its work and methods. 

The Card System Used in Entering the Signature 
of Each New Depositor 

As soon as a “prospect” is ready to be made a de¬ 
positor, the bank satisfies itself first as to his financial 
standing and then two cards are given to him like 
those shown in Form I. 

On both of these cards the depositor signs his sig¬ 
nature, his home and business address, the nature of 
his business, the name of the person by whom he is 
introduced, a statement of his previous or other ac¬ 
counts, and the date on which the account is opened. 

One of these cards goes to the bank teller, who pays 
all checks received from other banks. The second card 





























102 GETTING INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTS 


goes to the paying teller. Both are filed for reference 
as to signature. 

If the depositor has been solicited by the company 
his name is taken from the advertising cabinet. The 
name is placed in the mailing department list, where it 
is filed alphabetically. Names that require special at¬ 
tention are written on red cards. 

The name of the depositor is also posted in a small 
book under the name of the director, official, employee 
or friend of the bank who is responsible for introduc¬ 
ing the account. A glance at this record shows how 
many and what accounts have been introduced and 
from what sources—whether from advertising or per¬ 
sonal solicitation. 

The depositor's name is also entered in an average 
balance ledger (Form II). This ledger gives a full 
history of the account—when it was opened, by whom 
it was introduced, the rate of interest, and the aver¬ 
age balance of each month and each year. 

For the purpose of keeping the president of the bank 
and other officials in touch with the work that is being 
done the name of each depositor is placed on an ac¬ 
count sheet which is made out daily, and which shows 
the number, rate of interest, and amount deposited by 
each new patron. 


Tell Them So 

Y OU favor us,” advertises one bank, 
“when you deposit with us, for we 
want to get money in; when you bor¬ 
row from us, because it is our business 
to loan money.” 




CHAPTERJ;XV 

Circular Letter Campaigns for Deposits 

A prominent financier called at the People’s Savings 
Bank of Pittsburg some time ago and asked the sec¬ 
retary-treasurer this question: “To what do you at¬ 
tribute the success of banking by mail as conducted 
by your institution? I have followed it since its in¬ 
ception, and know it must be successful or you would 
not encourage it as you do.” 

The answer was right to the point: ‘ ‘ Good advertis¬ 
ing, perfect system and a strong bank.” 

Mail business has been transacted by banks to a 
greater or less extent for many years, but until quite 
recently it has been tolerated rather than encouraged 
—probably because one or all of these three attributes 
was lacking. Now the right kind of advertising has 
been found, efficient systems devised, and strong insti¬ 
tutions have entered the field. 

The method and system described here are a crea¬ 
tion of the advertising department of the People’s 
Savings Bank. Its success represents one of the most 
important developments of the savings bank business; 
it has lifted the savings bank above dependence upon 
the local field and given it a national scope. It is no 
uncommon thing for this bank to receive in a single 




103 























■ PEpPi.ES;SAVINGSjBAWjg' pitVs su rgh, pa, \ 

RECAPITULATION OP DEPOSITS AND WITHDRAWALS , 


104 GETTING INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTS 



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recapitulated the day’s business 













































































































































































































































































CIRCULAR LETTER CAMPAIGNS 


105 


day mail deposits from half a dozen states, as well as 
from the provinces and foreign countries. 

Magazine advertising is used to interest possible de¬ 
positors and to attract inquiries. Magazines such as 
the Ladies’ Home Journal, The Saturday Evening 
Post, McClure’s, Harper’s and Success are used. The • 
chief motive in the preparation of the copy is to in¬ 
spire confidence in the institution. Only then will in¬ 
quiries come. A man with a few dollars or a few thou¬ 
sand wants to be sure of the safety of a bank before 
he turns over his hard-earned savings to it, and any 
bank advertising that fails to inspire confidence is 
worse than lost. 

Confidence in the bank established, the advertise¬ 
ment must next show the increased profits which de¬ 
posit in this bank will bring—and how the bank is 
able to pay this higher rate and still be sound. 

How Follozv-Up Letters Are Employed to Secure 
Depositors and Increase the Business 

When an inquiry is received, it is followed up sys¬ 
tematically until an account is opened or it is deemed 
advisable to drop the name from the list. The first 
step in following up inquiries is to send out a typewrit¬ 
ten letter, together with a handsome booklet illustrat¬ 
ing the bank’s quarters, emphasizing the strength and 
safety of the institution, explaining its facilities, and 
giving a digest of the rules and regulations. Each in¬ 
quiry is answered promptly and the name placed upon 
a card and filed. In ten days if no reply has been re¬ 
ceived, a second letter is sent which usually results in 
either a deposit or other acknowledgment. 

If, however, no word is received at the expiration 
of another ten days, a third letter is sent. This thin? 


106 GETTING INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTS 


letter is not often necessary, but when it is, usually 
brings a reply. 

Deposits do not always follow quickly upon in¬ 
quiries. Often one month’s requests for booklets do 
not result in actual business for the bank until the sec¬ 
ond, third, and even fourth month. The reason for this 
is probably found in the fact that many persons do 
not think of saving money until the advertising has 
had its effect upon them, after which it often requires 
time to get a little money together. 

When a deposit is received through the mails the 
card is taken out of the “inquiry” file, and the amount 
of the deposit entered thereon. It is then filed under 
“new accounts,” and subsequent deposits are entered 
as received. A daily check-sheet is kept by a clerk who 
devotes her entire time to this department, showing 
the inquiries received and accounts opened. Each is 


DATE 


__ 


PE*: • LES SAVINGS 

PIT rSBURGH, PA. 

HEREWITH TOU WILL FIND_TOR 

(CASH. CHECK OR MONEY ORDER) 


$ __WHICH PLEASE CREDIT TO ACCOUNT NO_ 


IN NAME OF--___-__ 


AS PER PASS BOOK ENCLOSED. RETURN BOOK PROMPTLY AND- 


OBLIGE. 


YOURS TRULY, 


NAME. . 


ADDRESS. 


Form I: The form card which the depositor sends to the bank with each deposit 






CIRCULAR LETTER CAMPAIGNS 


107 


VvSK Tins -FORM Vilify EMPLOYING AXOtoKB BANK OR PERSON TO COLLECT roit voir. 


Pay to 




• PAMM^ mroiMitromciiAsroerriT*. * : ’ i : :- da-t*. 

PEOPLES SAVINGS BANK, 

PITTyilfHGIl. VA. 


1»0 


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TOE THIS POtt>f ONLY WirtQN eEEN DING DIRECT TO TQI 6 BANK FOR DRAFTS u 


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PEOPLES SAVINGS BANK, 

priTSBUBGar, P/u 

Pat totw »m>i£jaf>e PKOPLEK SAVINGS RANK, <w»« rkmjttancB:' t'. 


1 IHX: 


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,I 5 ol.& 4 bS; 


Form II (lower form): Order which depositor sends in when he washes to make a with¬ 
drawal. Form III (upper form): Order used when he 
withdraws through another bank 


credited to the publications which produced the in¬ 
quiry. At the end of the month these different col¬ 
umns are footed up, and we are able to determine the 
exact cost of inquiry and deposit. 

The accounting end of the system is handled by a 
carefully prepared set of forms and books. Letter 
forms, printed in copying ink, are used to cover the 
necessary correspondence of a depositor—acknowl¬ 
edgements of deposits, of pass-books, of withdrawals 
and any other routine business. This gives a record in 
writing of every smallest transaction. 

A signature card is sent to the customer when he 
makes his first deposit, and immediately returned by 
him with his signature. In order to save the depositor 
the trouble of writing a letter whenever he makes a 
deposit, a small card (Form I) is sent him, with his 
signature card and the acknowledgment of his first de¬ 
posit, and whenever the pass-book is returned. 

When actual withdrawal of money is called for, the 
regular deposit card accompanied by the order form 



























108 GETTING INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTS 


(Form II), is sent. This order is in such form that 
the transaction must take place between the bank and 
the depositor direct, and when it is employed no other 
bank may collect it. An order form, slightly different 
(Form III), is for use when the depositor desires to 
collect the amount of withdrawal through another 
bank. 

The usual deposit ticket is used at the bank. The 
loose leaf ledger system is employed for the thirty- 
five ledgers in actual use. 

Each receiving teller is required to keep a separate 
counter on the settlement sheet shown in Form IV. 
The deposits for each day are written up from the 
tickets to a loose sheet (Form V), one sheet for each 
ledger. By means of these sheets the auditor checks 
the bookkeeper’s posting. The withdrawals are 
checked in the same manner, by use of a form identical 
with the deposit sheet, except that the fourth column is 
“amount withdrawn.” All these transactions are 
brought together on a daily recapitulator by the em¬ 
ployment of the form sheet (Form VI). By means of 
this system each ledger can be balanced separately at 
any time, and the bookkeepers are required to prove 
their accounts monthly. The current ledgers, marked 
“A to L” and “M to Z,” are balanced weekly. 


Win Friends 

ZITHER things being equal, the mer- 
chant who has the most friends 
will make the most money. Our 
enemies will not deal with us. 

Elbert Hubbard 



Part V 


HOW TO SECURE BUSINESS 
FOR THE COUNTRY BANK 



Opportunity for expansion for the small bank is indicated by. this chart showing 
effective means of publicity for getting more business 





































































































Expansion 

J^ORGET the word limitation. There 
are no limits to the possibilities for 
expanding your business. 

Many a small bank has become a great 
institution through the wise and effective 
use of tried-out programs of publicity. 

Many an isolated bank has increased its 
deposits by applying result-getting cam¬ 
paign methods to its own use. 

You need not stop where you are. The 
field of opportunity is broad. Study it. 

Find the want to which you can appeal 
in the individual, in the business house. 
Expand! 







CHAPTER XVI 

Elements of Organization That Attract 

The basic elements of business-getting are the same 
in banking as in any other business where faith in the 
financial reliability of the institution is an essential. 

First of all, faith is necessary—trust in everything 
that has to do directly or indirectly with a banking in¬ 
stitution-confidence not only of the general honesty of 
the management and employees, but that it possesses 
banking ability. The relations of the country depositor 
to his bank are so close and ramify so far into every 
part of his social, political and financial life, that the 
depositor must be assured that everything is perfectly 
“on the square’’ before he feels free to make a certain 
institution “his bank.” 

Next, liberality and conservatism must be so mixed 
that the bank as an institution will not lose by its liber- 
ality or repel by its conservatism. What would be 
construed as only liberality by one customer, another 
might look upon as a reckless policy. 

Organization comprehends other things than the mere 
legal compliance with the banking laws. This might 
be termed external organization. The bank must of 
course be sound and properly established from the 
legal and financial viewpoint, but it is with internal 


hi 










112 GETTING COUNTRY BANK BUSINESS 


organization that the banker who turns his thoughts 
toward business-getting has to do. 

To be on a sound basis a banking organization must 
be comprehensive enough to take in all paying lines 
that can be handled through a bank, yet it must not 
attempt more than it can handle, and, most of all, it 
must not take on “side issues” which will conflict with 
the business of depositors and patrons and so tend to 
make them withdraw their support. 

A bank, by reason of its financial position, is able 
to handle certain lines at a great advantage over com¬ 
petitors. People intuitively believe that an insurance 
policy, for instance, is better if written through a bank 
than that written by an uninfluential local agent. Yet 
it is not always best to take advantage of this position, 
for that very agent may transact business with the 
bank that will net the institution a great deal more 
than the commission on a number of policies. 

The specific factors which bear the greatest relation 
to business-getting for the country bank are three in 
number: (1) organization; (2) personality of the 

banking staff; (3) favorable publicity. 


Hand on Throttle 


T HE head of a big business, seated 
by his desk, is an engineer on duty 
at his engine, surrounded by appliances 
that keep him in constant touch with 
every part of the work which his mach¬ 


ine is doing. 






CHAPTER XVII 

Getting Business for Each Department 

As a general statement it may be said that organiza¬ 
tion concerns more intimately business keeping and 
handling than business-getting. This is due to the fact 
that business is much harder to secure than to take 
care of after once obtained. But organization can do 
surprisingly effective business-getting, when every part 
is so systematized that the customer comes to have 
the most perfect reliance in the ability of the bank to 
handle his business. He not only throws all of his busi¬ 
ness to the bank, but commends it to his friends. There 
is a class of business men who are not affected by any 
other consideration than the satisfactory handling of 
their affairs. Once satisfied as to the efficiency, accur¬ 
acy and promptness with which their business is taken 
care of, they are not open to argument or conviction, 
but remain satisfied customers until conditions change 
materially. 

The banking department, pure and simple, is, of 
course, the most important department of the bank, 
attending to the deposits, loans, discounts, and taking 
up the matters under the head of pure banking. 

The Citizens ’ Bank in a Minnesota town started its busi- 
ness-gettingcampaignwithfivedepartments : banking, sav- 


1X3 








114 GETTING COUNTRY BANK BUSINESS 


ings, collections, insurance, correspondence. The sav¬ 
ings department consisted of three parts: (1) What 
may be termed the direct savings; (2) the minor sav¬ 
ings; (3) the penny stamp department. 

The collection department had two divisions, the 
regular collections—those coming in the course of regu¬ 
lar banking business—and also a large number of ac- 
counts formerly handled by a collection agency which 
had been absorbed by the bank. 

A straight fire insurance business was handled in the 
insurance department, life insurance not being at¬ 
tempted. 

The correspondence department was one of the most 
important parts of the bank, inasmuch as it was the 
duty of that department to take the best possible care 
of every item that could be benefited by a courteous 
business letter. 

Personality of Bank Officials and Department Staffs 
a Big Factor in Business-Getting 

The management and business staff was complete in 
every detail, consisting of president, cashier, assistant 
cashier, second assistant cashier, and manager of insur¬ 
ance and collection department, with usually two cler¬ 
ical employees. The appliances were at all times the 
most modern to be had, and aside from the regular 
typewriting machines, there was found use for a mime¬ 
ograph in putting out circular letters, an automatic 
money changer, a check-protector for the use of the 
cashier and an adding machine for the use of the staff. 

The regular banking department was under the con¬ 
trol of the president and cashier as far as loans were 
concerned, all loans made requiring the 0. K. of both 
of these officials. In the matter of deposits, every one 


DEPARTMENT BUSINESS GETTING 115 


of the staff considered himself equal to the task of 
bringing in a new depositor now and then. This was 
usually done through the personality of the members 
themselves. No man was ever connected with the Citi¬ 
zens’ Bank who was not a man of excellent character, 
and possessed of those general qualifications which go 
to inspire confidence and lead a wide-awake business 
man into doing business with his firm. 

Outside business was reached for in the same man¬ 
ner. If a member of the staff took a business trip to 
another town, it was seldom that he returned without 
something substantial to show, whether his trip had 
been for pleasure or for some other purpose. 

The savings bank department did a regular savings 
business in conjunction with other matters. The regu¬ 
lar method of savings was by means of the ordinary 
pass-book, on which the depositor received three per 
cent. 

This bank was one of the first in the Northwest to 
use the small metal banks. These banks were put out 
without a deposit, inasmuch as each depositor would 
be known to someone in the bank, and were brought 
in as the holder desired—generally on the first of the 
month; the amount accumulated was then taken out— 
under this plan the key of the metal bank is kept at 
the bank—and credited to the depositor. This proved 
very successful, and introduced many people to the 
bank that could be reached in no other way; a large 
number of young people who never would have 
thought of going to the bank to make a deposit, not 
only were trained in the practical side of saving, but 
also became friends of the banking staff. 

The collection department yielded very satisfactory 
returns. The regular department was constantly push- 


116 GETTING COUNTRY BANK BUSINESS 


mg for outside business. Slips were enclosed in every 
business letter that the bank sent out, urging that 
drafts be drawn through the Citizens’ Bank. In many 
cases it was possible to state to an outside firm that 
their customer was a depositor in this bank, and he 
would be pleased to have his drafts forwarded here in¬ 
stead of elsewhere. The Southern Minnesota Collec¬ 
tion Agency, taken over by the bank, had been a col¬ 
lection agency using the letter system. This system, 
it may be stated, is simply one using a series of let¬ 
ters sent to the debtor. Upon receipt of a reply from 
the debtor, correspondence is begun relative to the 
merits of the claim, and the matter closed off one way 
or another. 

This department was not kept up to standard, 
because of the lack of time; it came in for such 
time as was left over from the banking business, and 
consequently was not pushed to any great extent, espe¬ 
cially when collection matters would be antagonistic 
to the best interests of the bank. 

The Penny Savings Stamp Plan for Children — 

Its Advantages and Disadvantages 

The plan of penny stamp savings for small school 
children was also tried with but fair success. To be¬ 
come a depositor the child bought one or more stamps 
at one cent each, placing them on a card, which, when 
filled, was taken to the bank and deposited as cash. 
Owing to some difficulty in arranging for these stamps 
to be placed in the public schools, the plan was not as 
successful as it otherwise would have been. It is prob¬ 
ably safe to say that penny savings departments in a 
regular bank will not be a success under ordinary cir¬ 
cumstances in towns of less than 10,000 inhabitants. 


DEPARTMENT BUSINESS GETTING 117 


The insurance department was rather incidental to 
the other branches of the bank. A number of lead¬ 
ing companies had agencies in the office, and, owing 
to the fact that the city had one fire insurance com¬ 
pany, and for reasons before mentioned, business was 
not pushed for very hard. Only what came through 
loans, renewals and occasional solicitation was han¬ 
dled. Life insurance was not taken up to any great 
extent, as the leading companies all had local agents. 

Caution and Conservatism Must Especially Be 
Heeded in the Small Bank 

It may be said that another department existed 
which well might be called the promotion department. 
The country banker is a particular prey to scores of 
traveling people who wish to work their schemes 
through his bank. These schemes may have more or 
less merit, but they always desire to trade on the re¬ 
sponsibility of the banker and the reputation that he 
has taken years to obtain, promoting their own inter¬ 
ests first and the banker’s interest second—if at all. 
Among those that may be enumerated are life insur¬ 
ance solicitors, savings insurance solicitors, book can¬ 
vassers, solicitors for stocks in various companies, as 
gold mines and rubber plantations. Legitimate life in¬ 
surance is generally handled by a competent local 
agent, and most life insurance men coming into a bank 
to solicit through it represent companies which either 
are a trifle “shady" or have yet their reputation to 
acquire. Agents writing the combined life insurance 
and savings policies were at this time particularly per¬ 
nicious. Book canvassers discounting notes came to be 
looked upon with a cautious eye. The usual procedure 
was for a canvasser to sell a book at, say, $9.50, tak- 


118 GETTING COUNTRY BANK BUSINESS 


ing thirty day or perhaps annual notes, and discount 
them at the bank, fifty cents to a dollar off. These 
notes are sometimes all right, but more often not. 

Women taking notes often weave a web of trouble for 
the trustful banker, who may have to spend consid¬ 
erable time in explanation to those ladies who have 
signed a note without really understanding what it 
means. “Stock’’ men having gold mines or tropical 
plantations to be offered to the unwary occasionally, 
it may be said, turn out well, but taken as a class they 
are to be frowned upon, for they all, once they have 
collected their money and made their profits, leave 
town—and if everything is not entirely satisfactory 
the loss falls upon the banker. True, he may not lose 
money, but he loses many times as much in the loss 
of friendship and indirect business with the victimized 
parties. Occasionally, however, as every banker 
knows, a banker secures a very good thing through 
the instrumentality of the courteous and hard-working 
traveler. 

These two factors, then, organization first, and per¬ 
sonality of the banking staff next, are the factors 
which bring business to the country bank. 


The Best Time is Now 

L ET no one think the best days for 
business are past. Right now the 
chances of success are greater than they 
ever were. Only remember this: better 
training—greater knowledge—is neces¬ 
sary in our vast modern transactions. 

Walter H. Cottingham 




CHAPTER XVIII 
Direct Campaigns for Deposits 

Keeping the deposit line constantly on gain is what 
is now recognized as the big factor of banking. Safe 
and profitable methods of caring for business are mat¬ 
ters of such commonness that any exception is a rarity 
—an occasion for comment. But the good business- 
getter is greatly the exception. 

A large proportion of good business-getting is done 
by the country banks. The reason for this is the fact 
that the country banker is in the closest possible touch 
with both the prospective and the actual patron. The 
nearer this acquaintanceship—the closer the relation— 
the more certain results are to follow. 

How the Personal Solicitor Works in Canvassing 
for Business in the Country or Small Town 

An analysis of the work of business-getting coun¬ 
try banks shows that personal solicitation, combined 
with newspaper advertising, gets the bulk of the 
deposits in the most cases. It does not necessarily 
follow that these two means are the best than can be 
employed. Take the bank officer who is noted as a 
business-getter and he has one of two characteristics, 
marked energy along solicitation lines or along literary 


IIQ 






120 GETTING COUNTRY BANK BUSINESS 


lines. He likes either to “mix” or to “write.” When 
these two characteristics are combined, and on top of 
that a bank man has unusual business acumen, a 
country banking business is bound to result from his 
efforts which will be regarded as wonderful. 

Making broad divisions of the means by which 
deposit-getting may be assured and the widest favor¬ 
able publicity obtained, gives six general heads: 

(1) Personal solicitation; 

(2) The pleased customer; 

(3) The banking staff; 

(4) Correspondence; 

(5) Newspaper advertising; 

(6) Circulars, folders and auxiliary advertising. 

These factors are very much the same in importance, 

the difference, if any, in value being indicated by the 
order of the arrangement. 

The Plans to he Used in Soliciting Business Per¬ 
sonally in Country and Town 

The first thing to be considered in personal solicita¬ 
tion is the territory to be worked. Country and town 
are to be worked after different plans. To reach the 
country prospect get his right name first; next his loca¬ 
tion. The voting lists give the first; the country map 
the second. On the versatility of the solicitor depends 
the next step. A forceful and enthusiastic man may 
solicit to good advantage by visiting in the country, 
a less confident man should always get the prospective 
depositor to come in to the bank. 

In country solicitation only the most important 
farmers may be solicited, or a house-to-house canvass 
**iay be made. Perhaps the most resultful canvass is 
ghat in which a hired solicitor, well acquainted in the 


DIRECT CAMPAIGNS FOR DEPOSITS 121 


country and talking several languages—where there is 
a mixed population—makes a preliminary canvass for 
savings accounts. This solicitor will dig up larger 
prospects, who may be approached in other ways and 
induced to come into the bank for final closing. 

The work of the country solicitor is, in the main, 
educative. Take one instance: In every community 
there are dozens—sometimes hundreds—of farmers, 
who keep their money in an out-of-the-way place about 
the house, simply and solely because they do not under¬ 
stand the function of a bank. They do not know, first, 
that the bank really wants the custody of their money; 
second, that it will benefit them to be a patron of such 
an institution. A few minutes’ persuasive talk clears 
all this up, and later when the common courtesies of 
banking are extended to the “made” patron, he is so 
pleased that he becomes a life-long customer of the 
bank which started him as a depositor. 

Opportunities for Soliciting Desirable Business in 
Town Can be Grasped by Skilled Banker 

Town soliciting differs from country soliciting in 
that with the ordinary business man’s account goes 
the loan liability—or opportunity—depending upon 
the point from which the subject is viewed. The basis 
for solicitation should be the business list of the town. 
This once made, two classes of business should be 
pushed for—the desirable and the latent. 

Much desirable business is open to solicitation; the 
moving arguments being facilities for extending credit, 
general accommodation, business co-operation, and 
similar talking points. 

Business that may be “made” takes the skilled eye 
of the banker to detect the sure business opportunity 


122 GETTING COUNTRY BANK BUSINESS 


and to present it to the right man to promote and 
develop. Usually this is brought about by the solicit¬ 
or’s discovering the chance for development work and 
one of the officers best fitted for such work following 
up and doing the developing. 

Good points for arousing interest are those connected 
with the family or home. Only a solicitor can ade¬ 
quately present the advantages of a separate bank 
account for the housewife or the need of starting a 
savings account to run till a child becomes of age. 

To return to the list: Aside from the actual argu¬ 
ments used to persuade and convince, the list of pros¬ 
pects is the most important equipment of the solicitor. 
Kept up to date, it soon shows him just what he can 
do; it gradually changes into a valuable information 
sheet showing the prejudices, tendencies and accessi¬ 
bility of every prospect in the territory. 

Utilising the Customer to Secure Business—A Sat¬ 
isfied Patron Is the Bank's Best Advertisement 

The motto of a bank, as of other businesses, should 
be “Every customer a w r alking advertisement.” This 
is peculiarly necessary in a financial institution, depend¬ 
ing, as it does, upon the confidence the customer places 
in its reliability. Any doubts that exist in the custom¬ 
er’s mind are soon communicated by implication to his 
immediate circle of friends. It is not necessary for 
him to say anything derogatory of the bank; the fact 
that he is not an enthusiastic advocate of the institu¬ 
tion is sometimes as much a damage as though he 
actually “knocked” the business. On the contrary, 
if a man is well-treated and satisfied, even if he be the 
most phlegmatic in his make-up, he becomes a live and 
valued medium for the dissemination of those facts. 


DIRECT CAMPAIGNS FOR DEPOSITS 123 


There is no placing too much emphasis upon this. Use 
the customer right; if necessary, much better than 
right, and he is not only a permanent and profitable 


Jl| W INTEREST A 

M m / A paid on Mr 

#|'0 SAVINGS M? 

™t Old “ 

National Bank Nai 

ESTABLISHED IS5I U. S. DEPOSITARY ESTABLISH 

H 0/ INTEREST J 

U L* PAID ON 

SAVINGS 

If Old 
noNAL Bank 

ED 1851 U. S. DEPOSITORY 1 

I THE AVERAGE MAN The 

| Four hundred twelve dollars is the average sav- The man 
B ing account in the United States. Open a savings is waiting 
| account with us next pay-day and save $4.00 a demonilrat 
| week for the next two years and be as well off in a profita 
X as the average man. ing on a s 

- - 

Lost Opportunity | 

who needlessly spends $400.00 a year | 
the interest on $10,000.00. If he could 5 
e his ability to employ that amount § 
ble business, he would not be work- | 
mall salary. 

! RAINBOW CHASING helpi 

Is an unsatisfactory job. Begin now, Did yen 

and save regularly and you will have people are 
something substantial in your possession others squ 
for old age. this bank 

NG THE OTHER MAPI 

ever stop to think how fail some 
getting rich on what you and some 
ander? Start a savings account with 
next pay-day. 

BACK BONE 001 

Have you ever noticed how changed a man The re 

becomes after he has saved his firil $1,000.00? It dualities 

certainly gives a man “back bone.” Start a confiden 

E savings account next pay-day. are a(wa 

ID FRIENDS 

tan who can save has certain 
in his make-up that inspire the 
ce of others. Capital and credit 
lys good friends to a hustler. | 

Ponder a Profit Problem Make 

r 

A savings depositor quit extravagances six Don’t 1 

years ago and opened a savings account with a hlame t 
determination to save at leait $300.00 a year. u . 

Recently he bought a $3400.00 home for $2100.00 money 1 

spot cash. What were his total profits? portumtl 

Your Opportunities 

ae like some people who always 
heir luck. Tne man with 
a the bank makes his own op¬ 
es. 

GET THE HABIT The Fi 

| Our depoi 

Start a savings account next pay-day and save | them quarte 
regularly for some definite purpose. You will | the firil daj 
be surprised to see how fail your account will | tors > s credi 
grow when you get the saving habit. | 

rst Five Days of October 1 

iitors receive 4% annual intereil, payable to I 
rly in January, April, July and October. On n 
r$ of these months, intereil due our deposi- 0 
ted to their accounts and draws intereil there- E 
le as a deposit. Accounts opened during the 9 
ra of October draw intereil from October lil. M 


A group of ten advertisements used in a city campaign for savings depositsTin which ex¬ 
pectation of the 4 per cent interest rate was retained and a new 
argument for saving presented each time 
























124 GETTING COUNTRY BANK BUSINESS 


customer, but he becomes the best advertisement that it 
is possible to have. 

Personal advertising—aside from actual personal 
solicitation just spoken of—done by the banking staff, 
will vary in a direct ratio with the importance of the 
members making up the banking organization. The 
stockholders should be men of affairs and importance. 
If the directors are also men having much to do with 
the vital business affairs of the town; if these men 
are all that they have an opportunity to be in a busi¬ 
ness way, the foundation is well built. But in the per¬ 
sonnel of the office—the men customers meet day in 
and day out—there lies one of the most important 
secrets of successful bank advertising and business¬ 
getting and holding. A hearty handshake is worth 
more than a column display advertisement. A gener¬ 
ous, whole-souled welcome, not too effusive, but just 
right, will beat a five-page personal letter every time. 
These are the live things of life—things that show a 
personal interest stronger than any other means of 
communication may be made to show. 

The Banking Staff—How It Advertises the Institu¬ 
tion Through Personal Interest 

There are times when the personnel of the staff does 
more to advertise the business than will the pleased 
customer himself, but the employee or officer has one 
slight disadvantage. If a member of the staff makes a 
statement, it is discounted a certain per cent by the 
ordinary hearer, and his enthusiasm is laid to personal 
or mercenary motives, much more than will be the 
statement of a pleased customer. 

On the other hand, the employee has the advantage 
of being able to promise. He can say definitely that 


DIRECT CAMPAIGNS FOR DEPOSITS 125 


his bank will do a certain thing for a friend or 
acquaintance. He speaks, therefore, by authority, 
which the customer cannot do. He can also head off 
or modify demands that he knows will not be granted, 
and at all times he can post those with whom he comes 
in contact as to banking methods; what may be 
expected from a bank; how the bank may be used in 
connection with another business; emphasize the fact 
that a good record, with a recommendation from a 
bank, is always desired; and in many other ways can 
not only aid in the general advertising scheme, but can 
make the work of the officers easier, pleasanter and 
more effective. 

Letters to customers possess the advantage of being 
a permanent record, and, as such, a continuous adver¬ 
tisement for a business. Spoken speech is transitory, 
and must be repeated again and again in order to be 
effective. A letter to a customer, commending his rela¬ 
tions with the bank in the past, assuring him that he is 
considered a valuable depositor and one whom they are 
glad to have on their banking list, lives long after the 
same spoken message is forgotten. 



M ANY a profit-making organization 
is losing thousands of dollars, if 
one compares figures on these two 
questions: 

What is it doing ? What might it do ? 




CHAPTER XIX 

Advertising for the Country Bank 

Newspaper advertising for the country bank occu¬ 
pies a somewhat peculiar position. The credit of the 
bank depends to a large extent—more than is com¬ 
monly admitted—upon the unqualified support of the 
entire newspaper fraternity. Each paper in a bank’s 
territory demands a certain support from the bank. 
For this reason, if for no other, liberal use should be 
made of the weekly and daily papers. 

The Advertising of a Country Bank Should Be 
Liberal to Insure the Support of the Newspapers 

Direct advertising will be, of course, display adver¬ 
tisements and readers, while indirect advertising com¬ 
prehends that exchange of courtesies that can be 
shown one business by another. 

As regards the first, a good live advertisement, two 
columns square, featuring some department of the 
bank—its savings department one week; the collection 
department another week; the reasons why money 
should be sent by drafts another, and so on—will make 
the best and the most forceful advertising. Readers in 
the local columns, changed every week, are also pay¬ 
ing, if they are short, snappy and interesting. 


126 




















ADVERTISING AND CIRCULARIZING 127 


What has been the feature to be most criticized in 
the country bank advertisement of the past has been 
its lack of individuality. Change the names in a 
dozen advertisements of various banks and they would 
apply as well to one as to the other. If there is any 
advertisement in which personality should stick out it 
is in that of the banker. It should forever do away 
with that conservative fiction that a bank is an ice¬ 
box for the cold storage of money, instead of a human 
organization looking to every man in its territory for 
hearty co-operation and active support. 

The question which confronts the banker who sets 
out to write an advertisement is, “What shall I adver¬ 
tise V’ There is not one of the many functions of the 
bank that will not stand advertising. Advertise, then, 
every possible function. Informational advertising 
regarding the advantage of a regular deposit; of a cer¬ 
tificate of deposit; of a savings deposit—each of these 
educate the public where it needs. Always close with 
a direct appeal to the reader to come to the bank, get 
acquainted and try it for himself, and your advertising 
is sure, sane and safe in its result-getting. 

How the Circular May Be Used to Advantage — 
Saving All IVaste Effort in Securing Business 

The circular is the most abused piece of literature 
today. The true use of all circular matter and auxil¬ 
iary advertising is to sow seed on fertile, prepared soil, 
not to scatter on uncultivated ground where it will 
only by accident take root. It is almost incalculable 
the amount of money that would be saved in general 
advertising as well as in bank advertising, were circu¬ 
lars never put out except to accompany a personal 
letter connecting that particular piece of advertising 


128 GETTING COUNTRY BANK BUSINESS 


matter specifically with the person addressed. Circu¬ 
lars and general advertising matter unsystematically 
distributed will increase business, it is true, but at a 
large waste of good material. 

As an example of systematic distribution the bank 
paper may be mentioned. Many banks conduct a small 
paper edited in the bank and gotten out by the local 
printer or by some firm making this class of literature 
a specialty. This paper is so gotten up as to appeal 
to both patrons and non-patrons. 

The country banker has little use for signs, posters 
and specialties. Other than the traditional block gilt 
lettering over the door or on the window of the bank’s 
offices, certain stock circulars, and perhaps a big cal¬ 
endar, the country bank is not ready to use many of 
these advertising means. 

The best banking practice, meanwhile, will con¬ 
tinue to be carried out by the banker who builds 
upon a complete and reliable foundation—that of his or¬ 
ganization—who surrounds himself with a “live,” com¬ 
petent and loyal staff, and who treats his customers 
in the best manner, extending them every favor. 


Permanence 

T O keep his patrons so well served, 
so fully satisfied that they come 
back again and again—that his bank 
becomes their financial headquarters, 
where as a matter of course their bank¬ 
ing transactions focus—that must be 
the purpose of every successful banker. 




KOV 5 1209 


I COPY. Din.,. TO CAT. QiV. 





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